Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway

The Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway was a railway company that operated in the U.S. states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. It began as the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, chartered in Nashville on December 11, 1845, built to gauge and was the first railway to operate in the state of Tennessee.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the NC&StL grew into one of the most important railway systems in the southern United States.

History

The Nashville & Chattanooga Railway, predecessor to the NC&StL Railway, was organized in 1848 by a group of prominent Nashville businessmen. The line's first president was Vernon K. Stevenson, who was connected to wealth from the Grundy and Bass families of Nashville and was a vigorous promotor of a line between Nashville and Chattanooga; he would serve for 16 years. The first locomotive in Nashville arrived in December 1850 on the steamboat Beauty along with 13 freight cars and one passenger car. The train made its first trip the following spring: to Antioch, Tennessee. It took nine years to complete the of line between Nashville and Chattanooga, and the Hickman and Obion Railroad to Hickman, Kentucky, to reach the Mississippi River. In 1873, it was reincorporated as the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway (NC&StL); the company's tracks never actually reached St. Louis, Missouri, in the north. In early 1877, the NC&StL bought the bankrupt Tennessee and Pacific Railroad from the state government and operated it as a connection to Lebanon, Tennessee.

The company also took full control of the Duck River Valley Narrow Gauge Railway in 1888, converting it to standard gauge the following year. It had already leased the line, which linked Columbia, Lewisburg, and Fayetteville, Tennessee from its owners in 1879, when they had difficulty completing the final stretch into Fayetteville.

The railroad's only heavy repair shops for locomotives and cars were located in Nashville, Tennessee. The first roundhouse and machine shop were built in 1850, which were expanded by Confederate troops during the Civil War. By 1888 the shops had become obsolete and inadequate, so they were moved to a larger tract of land two miles west, below Charlotte Avenue. The new shops featured a full-circle roundhouse and a dozen shop buildings served by two transfer tables.

The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, an aggressive competitor of the NC&StL, gained a controlling interest in 1880 through a hostile stock takeover that caused much rancor between the cities of Nashville and Louisville.

However, the railroads continued to operate separately until finally merging in 1957. The company gave up steam operations in 1953. After the 1880 takeover, the NC&StL acquired branch lines in Kentucky and Alabama, and expanded from Nashville to Memphis. In 1890 the tracks reached Atlanta, Georgia, by leasing the state-owned Western and Atlantic Railroad. The railroad also operated the Quickstep (name dropped before 1910, then known as Nos. 3 and 4), Georgian, City of Memphis, Volunteer, an unnamed night train (formerly the Memphis Limited), a Nashville-Hickman local, plus a through sleeping car from the Tennessean on Nos. 3 and 4, a Chicago-to-Augusta, Georgia, train. Another part of the train split at Chattanooga and continued as a Southern Railway operation through eastern Tennessee, and onward to Washington and the Northeast Corridor.

The railroad also operated unnamed trains between Nashville and Atlanta via Chattanooga, between Memphis and Paducah, Kentucky, between Dickson and Hohenwald, between Nashville and Hickman, Kentucky, via Union City, between Decherd and Huntsville, Alabama, and other short routes.

Surviving equipment

Two 4-4-0 locomotives from the NC&StL's predecessor road, the Western and Atlantic are on display in museums: The General and The Texas are in the Atlanta suburbs of Kennesaw and Buckhead.

In 1953, the NC&StL donated its last steam engine, No. 576, to the city of Nashville. Originally known as a Yellow Jacket, the J3-57-class 4-8-4 locomotive was manufactured by the American Locomotive Company ("Alco") in 1942. The NC&StL referred to their 4-8-4s as Dixies, while most other railroads called them Northerns. It has been on display in Centennial Park since then. In 2016, the city of Nashville allowed the Nashville Steam Preservation Society to take out a 23-year renewable lease on the locomotive. The locomotive is currently at the Tennessee Central Railway Museum under restoration to working order and use for weekend excursion runs from downtown Nashville east to Watertown.

Two other NC&StL steamers survive, 0-4-0Ts nos. 701 and 704, that used to work in the shops. They were stored in Taylorsville and in 2026 were sold with 701 going to the Northeast Narrow Gauge Railroad Museum in Ralston, Pennsylvania and 704 going into private ownership in North Carolina.

In 2004, a former NC&StL EMD GP7 diesel locomotive, No. 710, was restored to its original paint scheme by the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. The TVRM also has the tail car from the city of Memphis on display at its Grand Junction Yard in Chattanooga and an EMD F7A No. 814 in storage.

In 2007, Huntsville terminal switcher No. 100, a former NC&StL GE 44-ton Diesel (1950) was moved from Mt. Pleasant to the Cowan Railroad Museum in Cowan. Though subsequently an L&N engine (number 3100), she was cosmetically restored to original scheme and number. In the process, the locomotive was found to be runnable. It is important as the first transistorized remote-control locomotive in the U.S. (converted in 1962).

References

Notes

Bibliography

Prince, Richard E., Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway: History and Steam Locomotives. Indiana University Press, 2001. .

External links

NC&StL Preservation Society, Inc.