D500 posted:Haven't checked this thread in a while; glad to see some interest in the NC&StL. I'm at the other, salt-water end of Alabama, and I know of the NC&StL mostly as a part of the L&N (which appropriated their slogan "The Dixie Line" to join the L&N's "The Old Reliable").
Beautiful locos, the Dixies. With a skyline casing they would be in the same class, esthetically, as the 20th Century and ESE J3 Hudsons, as well as the N&W J 4-8-4's. Bit of NH 4-6-4's there, too.
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RLH:
"D500, I meant to ask you if you knew the line those double heading 4-8-4's were on. I am guessing the Chattanooga to Nashville run and they are doing that to get over the hump of the southern Cumberlands just before the legendary Cowan Tunnel. There were some cool historic bridges and depots on that run like the cantilever bridge over the TN River at Bridgeport, AL and the Bridgeport Depot. To the east there is the bridge over Falling Water Creek near Whiteside, TN."
Per the article in December, 1963 Trains magazine, the photo above of the Dixies (not called "Northerns", seriously) was taken 3/30/46, in Bass, AL, at 70 mph pulling train 94 (the northbound Dixie Flyer) "making time through the Crow Creek Valley, 10 miles out of Sherwood TN, foot of the helper grade up to Cumberland Tunnel".
Bass is about 15 to 20 miles west of Bridgeport, AL that I referred to. They are indeed heading to the tunnel at Cowan. North bound is relative from Sherwood because Nashville is Northwest and Chattanooga is Northeast from there LOL. I grew up in that area went to high school 25 miles from there but that article was 1 year before I was born. I used to have a good friend that passed away in the late 80s. He was a retired L&N engineer and used run those Dixies or gliders as he called them. Tennessee has a lot of railroad history going back to 1850. In fact, that Cowan tunnel was built in the 1850s and is still in service for the CSX. It was an engineering feat for a long time. There was also a spur that went up the mountain to Sewanee, Monteagle and eventually Coalmont and Altamont that double backed over the mainline and the north end of the tunnel. It too was an engineering feat. It went. The Moutain Goat line was complete to Sewanee in 1853 from Cowan and it climbed 100 feet per mile at an almost continuous 2% grade. The track of the Mountain Goat spur was pulled out in the late 1980s. The same fate faced the legendary spur up The Sequatchie Valley between Jasper and Pikeville. Both roads were good roads.
