Following the 1960 closure, the rail line, land, and all equipment and rolling stock, were sold to a holding company named the Don Mower Lumber Company (no relation to the former Mower Lumber Company), and the railroad was conveyed to the Midwest Raleigh Corporation, which started to scrap the railroad and equipment. However, a group of local businessmen, led by Pennsylvania train aficionado Russell Baum, convinced the West Virginia state legislature to make the Cass Railroad a state park. In 1963, the first tourist excursion train left the Cass depot for Whittaker Station, north.