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Dixie Line, The Nashville Chattanooga & St Louis Railway book by Castner
The Dixie Line, Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis Railway by Charles B Castner Jr
Hard Cover
97 pages
Copyright 1995
CONTENTS
Introduction 4
Acknowledgements 5
A Look Backward 7
Atlanta Terminals And Division 17
Chattanooga Division 37
Nashville Terminals 67
Nashville, Paducah & Memphis Divisions 79
Bibliography 96
INTRODUCTION
It was the late John Krause who first approached me with the idea for this informal look at the NC&StL. John sent me a batch of 8x10 glossies taken by R. W. (Bob) Richardson while the latter was an U. S. Army trainee during World War II at Camp Forrest, Tullahoma, Tennessee. Bob's 35mm images, most of them shot in 1942, conveyed much of the same wartime railroad drama I myself was to see three years later in Chattanooga-in short, an NC&StL with its sleeves rolled up, its power, rolling stock and right-of-way structures grubby and in need of fresh paint, but an NC&StL throwing train after train down that mostly single-tracked mainline in Middle Tennessee and across the Cumberlands. Much more recently, correspondence with Bob Richardson himself confirmed impressions of those years.
My own introduction to the NC&StL came in 1945, when I transferred to a high school in Chattanooga. The war was in its final weeks, but Chattanooga's two trunkline railroads, the NC&StL and Southern, continued to roll record traffic loads. Among the better places to watch trains were from two overhead bridges that carried Central and McCallie Avenues, major city thoroughfares, across Southern's big Citico Yard, its twin mainlines to the north and east as well as NC&StL's parallel main to Atlanta.
What a grandstand those viaducts became, for beneath them and down that long tangent raceway rolled a procession of trains, NC&StL's and Southern's, hour after hour ... the NC&StL "show"-16-car Dixie Flyers, double-headed hotshot freights, solid mail runs, troop specials, and so on-made a lasting impression on me, and 40-plus years later (via the Richardson pictures) to be reminded of that rail drama well, it provided added impetus for this look at the NC&StL!
I remained in Chattanooga for the next two years to finish high school; meanwhile, Louis M. Newton, a friend, and his car helped me expand my area train-watching to also take in the major yards, downtown stations and several key junctions, including the busy East End Avenue tower.
In 1961, I joined the Louisville & Nashville's public relations department (in Louisville), being reintroduced to the former NC&StL which by then had merged with the L&N. Early in 1962, I was also reacquainted with the old Civil War engine, General, which for years had resided in quiet retirement near the Union Station concourse in Chattanooga. One of my earliest assignments was to accompany the General on several shakedown runs following its Louisville overhaul. I was also one of several L&N PR staffers fortunate to go with the engine on its celebrated "Great Locomotive Chase" reenactment from Atlanta to Chattanooga April 14, 1962, just a century and two days after the actual Civil War event. The rerun was over the former Western & Atlantic, and in terms of ancestry, the W&A, organized in 1836, was the NC&StL's very oldest antecedent. Subsequent assignments took me over the W&A as well as other NC&StL divisions, and, fortunately those trips were made in the company of crews, employees and officials from the former NC&StL ranks. The education was invaluable.
I soon came to appreciate that NC&StL folk could and did "railroad" with the best anywhere. Extremely competent men and women filled NC&StL's employee and officer ranks, and notwithstanding L&N's domination, NC&StL folk often outshone their Louisville kin. Had NC&StL been independent, it might well have transcended its already impressive history and accomplishments.
The definitive history of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis badly needs to be written. Perhaps in some small way this effort can contribute to that greater goal.
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