The Artemus-Jellico Railroad was an abandoned rail line located in southern Kentucky.
The Artemus-Jellico Railroad was an abandoned rail line located in southern Kentucky.
History
In the early 20th century, a syndicate from Warren, Pennsylvania, purchased a large section of undeveloped coal land in Knox County, Kentucky, incorporating as the Cumberland Coal Company. 1 The principal openings of their mines were approximately nine miles from the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (L&N) at Artemus.
Under Kentucky law, railroads could more easily obtain rights-of-way than coal companies. 1 As a result, the syndicate reorganized on July 15, 1902, as the Cumberland Railroad Company to construct an eight-mile track to the mining center named Warren. By December 1905, the work was completed, including some branches and extensions.
However, financial difficulties arose due to the cost of purchasing coal lands and constructing the railroad. 1 The L&N showed little interest in acquiring the line, but Southern Railway officials expressed interest. By late 1905 or early 1906, the Southern acquired the stock of the Cumberland Railroad.
Route Details
The Cumberland’s mainline extended south of Artemus, crossing the Cumberland River 0.75 miles south of Artemus at Brush Creek’s mouth, and continuing up Brush Creek for 8.7 miles to Lunsford (later known as Kay Jay). 1 From Lunsford, the main track ascended Big Brush Creek for 1.5 miles to Wheeler. A branch line from Lunsford followed Tye Fork west to Anchor, spanning 2.7 miles.
The line included a Parker through truss bridge over the Cumberland River with a 210-foot main span and an 89-foot approach trestle. 1 Additionally, there were 20 frame trestles totaling 1,998 feet.
Key stations along the line included:
| Milepost | Station |
|---|---|
| 0.0 | Artemus |
| 2.0 | Dean |
| 2.2 | Myrick (Avis) |
| 4.0 | Rock Cliff |
| 4.6 | Bennettsville |
| 5.1 | Trosper |
| 5.2 | Tinsley |
| 6.8 | Bays |
| 8.2 | Warren |
| 8.7 | Lunsford (Kay Jay) |
| 10.2 | Wheeler |
| 11.4 | Anchor |
Extension
Plans were made to extend the Cumberland Railroad from Warren to Jellico, a distance of 26.4 miles, to tap a large, undeveloped coal area. 1 However, the L&N also planned to reach the same area through a branch leaving its Corbin-Knoxville line at Savoy and following Poplar Creek to Greasy Gap. Land ownership in the gap was vested in the Louisville Property Company, a large holder of coal lands in the state, a subsidiary of the L&N. The Cumberland Railroad secured legal rights to Greasy Gap, but the L&N president, Milton Smith, refused the court-ordered payment, leaving five twenty-dollar gold pieces in an envelope marked “Greasy Gap purchase money” in the Cumberland Railroad’s safe.
Work on the Jellico extension began in earnest, including tunnels, grading, and bridge abutments. 1 However, work was suspended around June 30, 1908, due to a business recession after $852,385 had been spent. The death of Samuel Spencer, president of the Southern Railway, further stalled the project.
Had Spencer’s extension been completed, it would have included three tunnels and multiple steel viaducts. The route would have crossed the L&N’s Corbin-Knoxville line and Clear Fork River before reaching Jellico and connecting with the Southern Railway’s Knoxville-Jellico line. With the extension planned to the north from Artemus into the South Fork of the Kentucky River, and onto Lee County, where connections could readily be made with the Louisville & Atlantic Railroad and the Lexington & Eastern Railway at Beattyville Junction. Through such connections, both Lexington and Versailles, Southern Railway junction points, could be reached, thus ensuring a through line haul of coal from southern and southeastern Kentucky to Louisville, St. Louis, and other points. By securing control of the Lexington & Eastern Railway, a line that later formed the core of the Eastern Kentucky division of the L&N, the latter line might have been completely excluded from the Hazard coal field.
Later Operations
By 1909, the Cumberland Railroad operated two round-trip passenger trains daily, a local freight train during daylight hours and a mine train at night. 1 On August 10, 1911, the two-mile extension from Warren to Wheeler was completed, and on August 15, service began on the 2.7-mile branch from Lunsford to Anchor.
By 1916, there were three daily round trips, except for Sundays when there were two. 1 However, after World War I, the coal business declined. Southern Railway allowed the line to go into receivership and bankruptcy. On June 19, 1924, the line was sold to James A. McDermott of Barbourville, Kentucky, at public auction. He renamed the line the Artemus-Jellico Railroad, reflecting the original ambitions.
Under McDermott’s ownership, old Southern Railway locomotives, Nos. 142 and 177 were purchased for $3,500 and $4,000, respectively, and 15-seat Ford Model A railbuses were used for passenger service. 1 Two trailer coaches from the street railway system in Knoxville, Tennessee, were also acquired. The equipment was superseded in 1930 with a 55-seat Brill-Mack Rail Bus purchased from the Pennsylvania Railroad for $2,000. Passenger equipment was leased to C.W. Jones who operated it under the name Brush Creek Jitney Company until the railroad took over the service in 1929. Passenger service was discontinued in 1941.
Abandonment
A hard-surfaced road running parallel to the railroad line was completed in 1939. 1 By 1940, the decline in passenger business forced a reduction in the number of daily round trips from three to two, excluding Sundays. In 1941, passenger train service was discontinued entirely, resulting in the loss of the mail contract. Additionally, the company’s express business, less-than-carload haulage, and merchandise-car operations vanished due to competition from trucking. From that point forward, the A-J Railroad relied solely on transporting coal and materials for mining operations.
Coal mining had ceased permanently along the Lunsford-Anchor segment, leading to the abandonment of this 2.7-mile branch in 1945. 1
.In July 1949, the Fayette-Jellico Company in Warren, the railroad’s second-largest shipper, ceased operations and removed its mining equipment. 1 This event left the railroad’s future almost entirely dependent on a single mining operation.
On April 1, 1952, the Kentucky-Jellico Coal Company, the railroad’s largest remaining shipper, formally notified A-J management of the closure of its mine. 1 With virtually no freight left to transport, the railroad operated a single daily round-trip freight train only when there was business to move. By April 1952, this dwindled to just one round trip per week. In May of that year, the railroad completed a single round trip, generating a meager income of $121.08 for the month.
On June 3, 1952, the company applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for permission to abandon the railroad. 1 Approval was granted on July 29, 1952, with the abandonment becoming effective thirty days later. The railroad ceased operations on November 1, 1952. All equipment and salvageable materials were sold to the Hyman-Michaels Company of Chicago, which began dismantling the railroad immediately. The work was completed around March 31, 1953.
Unbuilt
The Cumberland Railway was intended to extend 34.4 miles from Artemus to Jellico. 1 However, only 10.2 miles were ever constructed, spanning from Artemus to Wheeler.
The planned extension would begin approximately a quarter-mile from the end of the track at Wheeler. 1 The line was to cross the valley via trestle work and ascend Big Brush Creek for about half a mile to reach the summit, where the Brush Mountain Tunnel—the first of three tunnels—was to be located. The line would descend Begley Branch for another half mile south of the tunnel, incorporating a steel viaduct at the branch’s head and a wooden trestle over Partin Hollow.
At the foot of Begley Branch, the projected railroad would enter the Greasy Creek valley, turning sharply southwest and following the creek to its head at Greasy Gap. From there, the line would descend Poplar Creek for two and a half miles to the mouth of a tributary. This stretch included steel viaducts over Mills Branch and Little Limestone. The line would then ascend the tributary for three miles, crossing Big Limestone via a long steel viaduct at the start of the climb. Midway up the grade, a 450-foot steel viaduct would span Dulin’s Branch, followed by the 800-foot Dulin’s Tunnel.
Initially, the plan called for two additional tunnels, Bennett Tunnel and Tunnel No. 4, which were later removed from the revised design. Near the top of the grade at Mud Creek Gap, the 1,650-foot Mud Gap Tunnel was planned. Beyond this tunnel, the summit would be reached, followed by a six-and-a-half-mile descent through the Mud Creek valley. Mud Creek was to be crossed seven times along this route and relocated in several places. The track would run on a dead level for about one mile, starting just beyond Mile Post 19 from Wheeler.
Shortly after Mile Post 20, the line would cross the main Corbin-Knoxville line of the L&N. 1 Three-quarters of a mile past this point, the line would bridge the Clear Fork River with an elaborate structure featuring a 140-foot through-truss span and eleven deck girder spans. A few hundred feet west of the river crossing, the projected line would parallel the right-of-way of the Halsey (JB&N) branch of the L&N, with the Halsey branch to the north until joining the L&N Saxton-Jellico line just north of Jellico.
The proposed route would then turn abruptly southwest, crossing the L&N Saxton-Jellico line and passing through Jellico to the west of the L&N track. 1 It would finally connect with the Southern Railway’s Knoxville-Jellico trackage approximately 1,000 feet south of the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.
Coalport Railroad
Artemus served as the junction with the L&N for the Coalport Railroad, a three-mile line constructed by the East Jellico Coal Company in 1894 to access its mines along Owens Branch. 1 After the construction of the Cumberland Railroad, the two lines ran parallel for nearly two miles along Brush Creek to the mouth of the branch, including side-by-side bridges over the Cumberland River.
In the early days, coal from Coalport was transported in pairs of 30-ton wooden cars, pulled by two yokes of oxen. 1 To accommodate this, the Cumberland River bridge was fitted with flooring. The L&N would position the empty cars about a quarter mile up the branch, where the oxen would take over. Eventually, a 45-ton 2-4-6 locomotive replaced the oxen. The Coalport Railroad was abandoned in January 1909.
Gallery
Sources
- Sulzer, Elmer G. “An Abandoned Kentucky Railroad. The Artemus-Jellico R. R.” The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, no. 108, Apr. 1963, pp. 7-18.
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