Photographers caught evidence of this last weekend as an empty CSX tank car train moved north on the former Clinchfield main line from Bostic, N.C., to Russell, Ky. CSX had closed that route in October as part of a strategy to focus traffic along three main corridors between metropolitan New York, Chicago, and Jacksonville, Fla. — dubbed the CSX of Tomorrow strategy.
It was unclear if CSX’s new CEO E. Hunter Harrison would hew to that strategy when he took control of the company in March and began closing yard humps throughout the CSX network. Test trains through coal country would seem to indicate a change of plans.
The Clinchfield route is the famed former main line of the Clinchfield Railroad and as recently as the 2000s saw more than a dozen loaded coal trains a day. The route also hosted manifest and intermodal trains.
UPDATED: Story with background from 2016. April 12, 2017, 4:20 p.m. Central time.
Great to hear that the Clinchfield RR will be opening again, this is one if the last railroads built in the 20th Century, and built to the best standards at the time.
Intermodal? Keep in mind that below Kingsport the line is not double-stack compatible. Eastman Chemical at one time could build 2 trains a week (at least) heading for Charleston/Savannah from Kingsport but the single-stack restrictions to Bostic made the cost prohibitive. The containers are moving by truck, initially by a Nashville-based company who set up shop in Kingsport to make it happen. The north end would also need some tunnel-raising as well.
Hey, when EHH soldiers on and gets control of Union Pacific, maybe he’ll reopen Tennessee Pass!
Get a grip. EHH didn’t cut the traffic back on that line. He wasn’t in the picture when they were planning and then doing it. WARD AND COMPANY did it.
And yes, traffic does increase from time to time also…good reason not to abandon lines…as in the B&O across West Virginia and Ohio and Indiana and Illinois…I could go on…
A good lesson to never get rid of routes and track.
Thanks for the information and correction. It was after dark and the two locomotives sounded as if they were working hard against the grade. One more assumption down in flames!
That wasn’t a 100 car coal train. It was 100 empty hoppers, that were put in storage at Poplar NC.
On Friday evening, 4/6/17, CSX ran a loaded 100 car coal train out of Kingsport headed south toward Erwin. I don’t know where the load originated from.
It’s just a test. Probably to see if they can, in fact, live without another route/line somewhere else. Don’t get your hopes up yet, especially with EHH at the helm.
Duck! A E Hurricane is blowing in the wrong direction
Never count a rail line out!
Nobody expected that! Harrison’s bringing lines back and not sloughing them off!