Southern Railway history: The earliest portion of the Southern Railway was the South Carolina Canal & Rail Road Company, which was chartered in 1828 to build from Charleston, S. C., to Hamburg, S. C., on the north bank of the Savannah River. Its purpose was to bring trade to the port of Charleston from inland […]
JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. — The Louisville & Indiana Railroad (LIRC), a 106-mile-long regional carrier connecting Indianapolis with Louisville, Ky., has acquired a Louisville-area short line, the defunct 5.5-mile-long Southern Indiana Railway (SIND). One of several railroads owned by the Chicago-based Anacostia Rail Holdings Co., LIRC operates from a yard and maintenance shop here. It will […]
Saluda Grade future possibilities are murky. Nearly 22 years have passed since freight trains descended Southern Railway’s Saluda Mountain. Kudzu vines conceal the right-of-way in many places and heavy Appalachian rains have washed away sections of track. Although shrubs and small trees are reclaiming North America’s steepest main line in rural western North Carolina, Norfolk […]
LUDLOW, Ky. – Norfolk Southern and the Ludlow Heritage Museum have signed a lease agreement to preserve the NS-owned former Southern Railway Ludlow Yard Store House building, the last remaining original structure in Ludlow used by the Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railway, which was leased to Southern in 1894. The agreement allows museum […]
Norfolk & Western Railway history has two distinct phases. Before 1964, it was a coal hauler controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. It even looked like the Pennsy in places: Tuscan Red coaches, position-light signals, and a short electrified district — but no Belpaire fireboxes. In 1964, possibly as a reaction to the proposed merger of […]
PITTSBURGH — Norfolk Southern’s Southern Railway heritage unit, ES44AC No. 8099, was among two locomotives damaged when a train hit a rock slide and derailed early Sunday in Pittsburgh’s Baldwin Borough. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports the derailment occurred about 4 a.m. along the Monongahela River paralleling State Route 837, with both locomotives overturning and five […]
Southern Railway 4501. You could write a book about this locomotive, and indeed one has been done. If it were a fable, it would be the story of a commoner becoming royalty. This is a brief look at a once-ordinary, freight-hauling 2-8-2 made into a legendary excursion locomotive. Southern 4501 history Baldwin built No. 4501 […]
The proposed merger of Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern – the first combination of Class I systems in two decades, and likely the last – should win favor in Washington. After all, their comprehensive merger application checks all of the Surface Transportation Board’s boxes. More rail competition? Canadian Pacific Kansas City has that in […]
Not many people get the opportunity to shape the history of a railroad and leave their fingerprints on its system map. But retired Norfolk Southern transportation planner Louis M. Newton, who died Friday at the age of 94, was among this elite group. Newton put his stamp on Norfolk & Western with a move that […]
WASHINGTON — Amtrak has questioned Canadian National’s plan to sell Kansas City Southern’s route between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., as part of the planned merger of the two railroads, a plan which would see CN retain the right to operate on the route along with a freight tenant. The Amtrak comment came as […]
The Southern Railway was famous for good-quality passenger service. Here are Classic Trains editors’ picks for the five best Southern trains. Crescent Introduced on April 26, 1925, the Crescent Limited ran between New Orleans, Mobile, Atlanta, Washington, and New York. The train was operated by the Louisville & Nashville, West Point Route, Southern, and Pennsylvania […]
CHICAGO — Canadian National has announced it intends to beef up what is currently a meandering, unsignaled 40-mph ex-Gulf, Mobile & Ohio branch to connect with Kansas City Southern’s main line to the Gulf Coast. And if Canadian Pacific gets KCS, it expects to direct Mexican supply chain business to and from Western Canada through […]
