Carolina Clinchfield & Ohio

Company History: The CC&O was established in 1905 under the name South & Western Railroad and changed their name in 1908. By the time of the name change, they had built from Johnson City in eastern Tennessee south to Marion in western North Carolina. Building in both directions, by the following year they had reached Dante, Virginia to the north and Spartanburg, South Carolina to the south. The final segment of mainline was built in 1915 from Dante to a connection with Chesapeake & Ohio in Elkhorn City, Kentucky. The CC&O was the last Class One mainline completed in the eastern U.S. and as such was built with the assistance of power shovels and other mechanical grading equipment. Long bridges were built of steel at the outset and tunnels were numerous to keep the grades to a minimum. In fact with a total of 58 tunnels, the 277 mile CC&O mainline had more tunnels than the entire Great Northern Railway. In addition to the voluminous coal traffic generated on the north end of the line, the CC&O’s position made it part of a through route from the Industrial Midwest to the ports of South Carolina and Georgia. In 1924, the CC&O was jointly leased by Louisville & Nashville and Atlantic Coast Line. This may seem odd since neither the L&N nor the ACL actually connected with the CC&O although CC&O did connect with an ACL subsidiary, the Charleston & Western Carolina in Spartanburg (although even that required a transfer run over Southern Railway.) It is probable that L&N and ACL leased the CC&O to keep it out of the hands of the Chesapeake & Ohio who could have used it to compete directly against them for north-south traffic. L&N and ACL established the Clinchfield Railroad to operate the CC&O property. CC&O rolling stock that was included in the lease continued to carry CC&O reporting marks while equipment acquired by Clinchfield Railroad carried CRR reporting marks. Even after Clinchfield’s 1983 merger into Seaboard System, it was still common to find CC&O marks on ancient maintenance of way equipment.

Successor/Parent History: The Clinchfield Railroad (reporting mark CRR) was an operating and holding company for the Carolina, Clinchfield and Ohio Railway (reporting mark CCO). The line ran from the coalfields of Virginia and Elkhorn City, Kentucky, to the textile mills of South Carolina. The 35-mile segment from Dante, Virginia, to Elkhorn City, opening up the coal lands north of Sandy Ridge Mountains and forming a connection with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway at Elkhorn City, was completed in 1915.

The Clinchfield was the last Class I railroad built in the U.S. east of the Rocky Mountains. The 266-mile railroad provided access to numerous scenic wonders of the Appalachian region and is probably best known for the state-of-the-art railroad engineering techniques applied in its construction, as exemplified by the Clinchfield Loops climbing the Blue Ridge Mountains north of Marion, North Carolina.

The Clinchfield Railroad began operating the line December 1, 1924, and for many years it was leased jointly by the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and Louisville and Nashville Railroad. When the L&N merged with the ACL's successor, the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad, effective January 1, 1983, forming the Seaboard System Railroad, the separate operating company was unnecessary and was merged into the Seaboard. The line is now owned and operated by CSX Transportation as their Blue Ridge Subdivision (Spartanburg to Erwin, Tennessee) and Kingsport Subdivision (Erwin to Elkhorn City).

On October 15, 2015 CSX Transportation announced it was closing the Erwin yard facility, with a loss of 300 jobs. All through traffic trains would cease using the Clinchfield Route. Industries around Kingsport and Johnson City, TN would still be serviced by trains coming North from Spartanburg, SC and Bostic, NC, as would the Alpha Natural Resources coal preparation facility in McClure, VA by trains coming south from Shelbiana, Ky. Norfolk Southern would still use the line from St. Paul to Frisco, VA via a trackage rights arrangement with the CSX. The line between St. Paul and McClure (19.4 miles) would be idled immediately, effectively ending the use of the Clinchfield Route as a functioning bridge route between Spartanburg and Elkhorn City. It has been reported, however, that there have been instances of equipment running between Shelbiana, Ky and Dante, Va. The last time a train crossed the entire "North End" of the Clinchfield Route (from Elkhorn to Kingsport) was for the 2015 running of the Santa Claus Special, which happened in November 2015. It remains unclear as to the future of this rail line.