From what I know of the Louisville and Nashville, it had a strong traffic base with Kentucky coal, and also was the dominate railroad in Birmingham. I’m thinking it should have been a wealthy railroad, like C&O and N&W.
On the other hand, I recall reading in Trains magazines that they were not in good shape during the late 1970s and up until the CSX merger. I believe the ICC ordered L&N on a couple of occasions to fix their track, and increase car supply. Was this caused by bad management, or am I missing something?
Here is a link to the ‘History’ site on the L&N Historical Society’s site: http://www.lnrr.org/
It will give some insight into the history of the L&N RR. I grew up with the L&N RR in Memphis as a neighborhood acquaintence, just a short bicycle ride away. The L&N had a consistency of management as one man was President from the 1880 until 1920’s Milton Smith.
You are right about the access to the rich Kentucky coal fields and a route that encompassed ports on the ohio river and coal and iron fields in Alabama, as well as steel production in Birmingham. A system route that included Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville, and Birmingham. During the 2nd World War it carried a major portion of the Nations war materials.
What happened, Then to such a potentially strong railroad? Over expansion? Assets beled out by Seaboard Coast Line ( long time, major shareholder) Rationalization by abandonment? Tennessee Central, Monon over extension of lines ability to settle its debts?
Here is an interesting link to a timeline of the L&N’s history:
Is it possible, that the answer is in the kind of coal it hauled? C&O and N&W made their money hauling coal to tidewater, presumeably for export(?) Was L&N hauling the kind of coal used for home and industry heating, that went into rapid decline after WW II?
L&N was not hauling Anthracite, which was the home heating coal of choice. That was mostly mined in the Lehigh area in PA (the anthracite haulers did go bankrupt post-war). They had many mine branches in Kentucky, which then and now produced some of the best coal, both for power generation and steelmaking…
If I remember from the time, part of the situation was a change in traffic patterns from the coalfields. An increased demand for export coal sent shipments south from the coal producing areas onto lines that weren’t built for such an amount of heavy traffic and it took it’s toll before the L&N could get things rebuilt to accommodate it as a permanent phenomenon. Similar to the situation BN faced with the Powder River line, though not on such a scale.
L&N was laid out to haul coal north to Ohio River ports and interchanges in carload and small blocks, in the 70’s the flow reversed and changed to unit and trainload lots for southern electric powerplants. The L&N needed to completely rebuild the lines leading south from the coal fields as the sidings were too short and there was no CTC.
Although I’m no expert on the “Old Reliable”, from my general impressions and recollections of the times I was going to post pretty much was Kevin said above - that the L&N then was essentially an eastern US version of BN, a victim of its own success in which it did not anticipate all of the unintended consequences, especially of track deterioration and shortages of equipment, ICC rate regulations, and a generally low opinion of the industry that made obtaining financing to improve the situation difficult, etc.
On top of the traffic flow and train size changes noted above, the situation was aggravated by a drastic increase in car size and gross weights, from the common 50 to 70 ton payload range before to the 100 ton range then, and not always on larger wheels, either. What was not appreciated at the time is that increase in gross car weights put the rail-wheel loads just over the threshold of tolerable stresses and wear, and really beat the heck out of the track unless it was in pretty good shape to start with. And once the MOW people got behind that 8-ball, it was difficult as heck to play ‘catch-up ball’, esp. with the tight finances of the era.
There were definitely ‘rock-and-roll’ problems with large, heavy cars - esp. covered hoppers - rocking themselves off the track at speds in the 10 to 25 MPH range. The culprit was found to be typically 3 or more alte
Kevin and Paul are right traffic flow was a big part of the problem. Coal moving north was the main traffic on the eastern end of the system through Louisville & Cincinnati. Post war growth in the south and the increasing need for power changed this. In the 70’s southbound traffic grew almost 5 times the amount it did going north on the Cincinnati to Atlanta line. All this new traffic created tremendous wear on motive power, rolling stock and trackage. Also the winters of 76-77 and 77-78 were extremely cold (boy do I remember that). The L&N Historical Society magagzine did an article in the September 07 issue about the problem of frozen coal and the resulting hopper shortage during the winter of 78. During this time the line also suffered from a severe motive power shortage which the magazine ran a series of articles on in 2005 & 2006. Adding to the misery were low coal rates and an out of date loading system that sent more hoppers to the tipples than they actually needed on a given day.