From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tennessee Central Railway
Reporting marks	TC
Locale	Tennessee
Dates of operation	1893 – 1968
Successor line	abandoned
Track gauge	4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm) (standard gauge)
Headquarters

The Tennessee Central Railway Company was founded in 1884 as The Nashville and Knoxville Railroad Company. It was an attempt to open up a rail route from the coal and minerals of East Tennessee to the markets of the midstate, a service which many businessmen felt was not being adequately provided by the existing railroad companies. Nevertheless, by the 1880s, railroads were becoming a mature industry and it was not easy for a new competitor to break in. The firm and its successor companies would struggle for decades with both financial woes and hostility from the more established lines. (It was unable to use Nashville's ornate new Union Station terminal for instance, as that was controlled by the rival Louisville & Nashville Railroad.) The Tennessee Central linked Knoxville directly with Nashville via a route which ascended the Cumberland Plateau Escarpment between Cookeville and Crossville; the traditional major route for this passage was made via Chattanooga.

In 1893 the line was reorganized and renamed the Tennessee Central Railroad Company. Several versions of this name were used over a period of some thirty years, until the final name, Tennessee Central Railway Company, was adopted in 1922.

The line expanded slowly and piecemeal to the west and north of Nashville during this period, falling into receivership twice, in 1897 and 1912, on the latter occasion operating in technical insolvency for ten years. The 1930s were a lean period, although the firm brought the first diesel-electric locomotive to Nashville in 1939.

Wartime traffic in the early 1940s brightened the financial picture, but after that hard times returned. The last of the steam engines was retired in 1956, and the company began dropping money-losing passenger service at the same time. Although a program of right-of-way improvement and new equipment acquisition was carried out, the firm at length fell into its third and final receivership in 1968. Its assets were sold off to its competitors that year, one of the buyers being its old and not at all friendly rival, the Louisville & Nashville.

The Tennessee Central endured for over 80 years in the face of very tough odds, and played a considerable part in the economic development of its service region. It is still remembered fondly by many people in the small towns it served, and is commemorated by a namesake institution, the Tennessee Central Railway Museum, located in its former master mechanic's shop. An unmarked monument also exists in today's Interstate 440 loop south of downtown Nashville, which sits on the old Tennessee Central right-of-way, purchased by the state in the railroad's last years. The Nashville and Eastern Railroad was formed to revive operation of the line's freight service to Lebanon, approximately 30 miles east of Nashville, with occasional runs to points somewhat further east. The trackage between Monterey and Crossville was dismantled in the 1980s, which has proven problematic to recent advocates of the restoration of passenger train service between Nashville and Knoxville.

• History page at the Tennessee Central Railway Museum site