The 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
Mineral s of
East Tennessee to the markets of the
Midstate , a service which many
Business men 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 . 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.
