Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway
The Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway was a railroad company in the southern United States. It was in December 1845, the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad in Nashville founded and was the first railway company, in the US state , Tennessee began operations.
It took nine years to build the 240 km long rail line between Nashville and Chattanooga . The task turned out to be difficult as the route had to negotiate the steps between the Highland Rim and the Cumberland Plateau in between . A 679 m long tunnel near Cowan was considered a technical marvel at the time of its completion. The route between the two cities also touches the two neighboring states of Alabama and Georgia because of the topographically difficult terrain . New settlements such as Tullahoma and Estill Springs emerged along the route during construction .
During the Civil War , the route gained strategic importance for the armed forces of both sides. By the campaigns in Tennessee during the 1862 and 1863 who urged Union troops , the Confederates back from Nashville to Chattanooga, where the fighting on the rail line moved. This was repeatedly taken under fire, sabotaged, repaired and partially served to supply the opposing armies.
After the Civil War, the company acquired a few smaller railroad companies in the north and was re-established as the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway ("NC & StL") in 1873 (although none of the company's rail lines led to St. Louis , Missouri). In early 1877, NC & StL took over the assets and company of the bankrupt Tennessee and Pacific Railroad from the state and operated rail services on a branch line to Lebanon , Tennessee.
The rail company emerged as an aggressive competitor on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad . This won the majority of the shares through a hostile takeover in 1880, which caused considerable resentment between the cities. Both railway companies existed side by side and operated their railway lines separately until the two companies finally merged in 1957. By then, NC & StL continued to develop and grow by acquiring various branches in Kentucky and Alabama and expanding the rail line to Memphis and, in 1890, to Atlanta , Georgia by leasing the state's Western and Atlantic Railroad .
The L&N, which itself was similarly controlled by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad , eventually merged into the freight transport company CSX , which still uses the original railway line between Nashville, Chattanooga and Atlanta.
From 1941 the company replaced its steam locomotives with diesel vehicles. In 1953 the NC & StL donated their last steam locomotive , the No. 576, the city of Nashville. The Northern- type locomotive produced by the American Locomotive Company ("ALCO") was once known as the Yellow Jacket and has been in Centennial Park since it was donated . The railway company itself referred to the Northern locomotives as Dixies .
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- Prince, Richard E., Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway: History and Steam Locomotives . Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN 0253339278 .