Appalachian History

It was born from a foreclosed company, and in the end had so little value as a railroad that it was simply abandoned rather than sold. Georgia’s Tallulah Falls Railway owners had a grand plan to connect to various other southeastern lines, but that plan was never implemented, most likely because the mountainous terrain would have required many millions in construction costs. The TF’s nickname was the Rabun Gap Route, although is it any surprise that some local people jokingly called it the "Total Failure"?

The original line between Cornelia and Tallulah Falls was built by the Northeastern Railroad of Georgia, a railroad chartered in 1870 by a group of Athens businessmen to build a line between Athens and Clayton. It reached Tallulah Falls in 1882. As the northern terminus of the rail line for over twenty years, Tallulah Falls became a popular resort town. Trading opportunities also increased for this remote region and the depot served as a social center.

This line was purchased by the company that would soon become the Southern Railway, who were mostly interested in the southern end of the line as a way to tie Athens on to their Atlanta-to-East Coast mainline.



The Blue Ridge and Atlantic bought the northern end of this line from the pre-Southern Railway in 1887 as the first step in their effort to connect Savannah with Knoxville, which was supposed to use a new route to get from Tallulah Falls to Clayton, then use the route surveyed prior to the Civil War by the Blue Ridge Railroad to connect Clayton to Franklin, NC.

The Blue Ridge and Atlantic failed in 1897, and The Tallulah Falls Railway was organized the following year to take over the former’s foreclosed properties. With the financial backing of Southern Railway, the new owners extended the line to Clayton in 1904, to North Carolina in 1906, and to Franklin in 1907. The result was a 57-mile line from Cornelia to Franklin.

Perhaps the most distinguishing single characteristic of the Tallulah Falls Railroad was its fascinating variety of trademark trestles. Forty-two of these massive wooden wonders had to be negotiated along the scenic journey, each having to bear the full weight of a 140,000 lb. locomotive and its heavy load. It is these forty-two trestles which created much of the line's personality, and more than any other single feature dramatically reflected the type of country that the TF served - rugged, wild and often dangerous.

The trestles of the Tallulah Falls Railroad were quite varied. The shortest of the trestles was approximately 25 feet in length, while the longest is generally considered to be the 940 feet long scenic wonder which skirted the rooftops over the town of Tallulah Falls. The only exception to the wooden trestles along the line was the massive 585 feet long steel and concrete bridge spanning Tallulah Lake.

Though numerous accidents and mishaps occurred along the many TF trestles, most were rather minor. The dangerous reputation these structures held came primarily from two collapses: in 1898 at Panther Creek and in 1927 at Hazel Creek. Both mishaps resulted in fatalities. The accident at Hazel Creek produced some of the railroad's most memorable and dramatic photographs.

Around the time that the railroad was under construction between Clayton and Franklin, the Southern was considering a grander plan, one which would incorporate the TF and several other existing lines into a new route over the Appalachians to Knoxville, TN. If constructed, the railroad would have continued from Franklin down the Little Tennessee River valley to Southern's Murphy Branch (Asheville-to-Murphy, NC) near Almond.

From there, trains could proceed a few miles to Bushnell where the Tennessee & Carolina Southern branched off and followed the river 14 miles to Fontana. From Fontana, new tracks would be built alongside the Little Tennessee to Calderwood, where they would join existing lines to Maryville and Knoxville. None of it ever came about.

Passenger service came to an end in 1946. Ongoing repair costs and mounting debt forced the railway to cease operations in 1961; the last freight train ran on March 25 that year. A short section from Cornelia to Demorest remained in operation for several years longer, but was abandoned sometime before 1985.


sources: http://ngeorgia.com/railroads/trestlesofnorthgeorgia.html
http://railga.com/tallu.html

My thanks to Ed Kelly of Athens, GA for his help on the early history of the Blue Ridge and Atlantic

It was Ohio's longest-lived narrow gauge railroad.

Monroe County's rugged terrain hindered commerce and communication during the 1800s. In the early 1870s Woodsfield businessmen, led by banker Samuel L. Mooney, promoted a narrow-gauge railroad to connect to the Baltimore and Ohio at Bellaire.

Narrow gauge railroads were popular during this boom era because they cost less to build and operate than standard-gauge lines and could traverse sharp curves and steep terrain. The Bellaire and Southwestern Railway was completed through Armstrong's Mills and Beallsville to Woodsfield in December 1879, giving Monroe County a welcome modern link to the rest of the country.

Its initial success prompted its extension westward, and it was soon renamed the Bellaire, Zanesville, and Cincinnati Railway, reaching Zanesville via Caldwell in late 1883.

While it served a vital role in the Monroe County life, by 1886 the BZ&C had defaulted on its construction bonds and entered the first of many receiverships. Its 300 trestles and bridges were expensive to maintain; frequent landslides added to operating costs.

Original caption reads: The Woodsfield ceremony for the OR&W's last run. Mayor Clyde Merskel is speaking from the top of the box car. A George Kampheffner photo. (Gerald Seebach Collection)

Only the coal and oil booms of the 1890s, along with convoluted financing schemes, kept the railroad operating into the 20th century; a benefit for the people of Monroe County if not its stockholders. Reborn as the Ohio River and Western (locally called the "Old, Rusty, and Wobbly") in 1902, it continued to operate at a loss until the Great Depression. The Village of Woodsfield had staged a ceremony for the first narrow gauge train to arrive in town Tuesday December 2nd, 1879. Similarly, a ceremony was held on Memorial Day May 30, 1931 for the last train. Hundreds turned out. The BZ&C had lasted 52 years.


Source: www.pbase.com/gshamilton/image/68697306
www.narrowtracks.com/minibunch/articles_prototype/Views_Along_OR&W/2004-06-OhioBicentennialMarkerDedication.htm

Fans like it because it is short, completely independent (in more ways than one), and sticks staunchly to steam power---represented by three extraordinary locomotives, the like of which there is not anywhere else. They like also its galloping rails, which are rough enough to thrill but not sufficiently out of line or surface to derail more than once a trip.

Railroad historians are well hardened to tales of corporate vicissitude, but even they grow weepy when confronted with the hard luck story of the Smoky Mountain Railroad—a fit subject for Voltaire’s “Candide.” It never did have a smooth middle class existence; from the year it was opened it never found a visible means of support and, like a street Arab, wandered from lease to lease with a reducing trip through the courts in between tries.

W.J. Oliver is said to have built the old Knoxville, Sevierville & Eastern in 1909 for the purpose of selling it to the Southern, but somehow, the sale fell through. Local banks took over the property and tried to get as good a deal as possible for trackage rights of 2.2 miles between Vestal and Knoxville over the Southern’s Marysville branch. Since lumber formed most of the traffic in those days, rapid deforestation brought the line to its first financial crisis: in 1921 the little railroad took its first whirl through the courts and emerged shirtless, though still trousered, as the Knoxville & Carolina Railroad.

SM Pacific No. 110 takes the mixed train over Boyd’s Creek trestle. Baldwin built the low-drivered (47-inch) 4-6-2 for the Little River Railroad, which sold it to the SM back in 1940.

Five years later its management eyed the courts once more---this time with a threat to take the matter up with a junky. But the taxpayers of Sevier County were still paying interest on the $150,000 in bonds issued to aid original construction and were anxious to keep the road going. Hence, they offered to waive county taxes for five years, and the local trade volunteered to order in its merchandise by rail.

With these as talking points, the road’s management offered the property to the Tennessee & North Carolina then operating a lumber road from Newport, TN 21 miles up the Pigeon River to Crestmont, NC and a separate 25-mile line which, connecting with the Southern’s famed Asheville-Murphy branch at Andrews, ran in circles through the woods to Hayesville. Neither of these T&NC roads was located anywhere near the other or the Smoky Mountain.

Nevertheless, their owners liked the proposition; they announced plans to run motor trucks for l.c.l. (less than container load) over the 24-mile gap between Sevierville and Newport; and, with personal funds amounting to $75,000, acquired the Smoky, the territory of which was described at the time as 75% in timber, 15% under cultivation and 10% in pasture.

Weaklings united do not make for strength. Late in 1937 the T&NC interests sold their Smoky stock to Max Kesselman and Joe Silverstein, acting as the Midwest Steel Company, of Charleston, WV—a junk outfit. On the first day of 1938 the T&NC, with approval of the Interstate Commerce Commission, abandoned its Newport Division, ending the daily service of a quaint “gasoline passenger bus” for passengers, l.c.l. and mail.

In April the T&NC sought to abandon operation of the Smoky, while, at the same time, Midwest Steel asked for permission to dismantle the property. The latter proposal was not successful, and on October 14 the Smoky undertook independent operation under its scrap dealer managers.

Arguing that the road was in terrible shape, President Silverstein asked the ICC to approve an RFC “rehabilitation loan” of $40,000, a request which the Commission denied promptly, on grounds that present and future earning power was insufficient to sustain it and that the movable security which the Smoky offered comprised but two combine cars, two flat cars and one box car---all exceedingly old and disheveled.


Source: ‘Smoky Mountain,’ by William H. Schmidt, Trains magazine, December 1949, pp. 28-30
full article here



appalachia, appalachian history, history of short line railroads, Smoky Mountain Railroad