The Cedar Brook Viaduct is an abandoned railway bridge for the Louisville Southern Railway’s Lexington to Lawrenceburg Division to cross over Cedar Brook near Tyrone, Kentucky.
Originally incorporated as the Louisville, Harrodsburg & Virginia Railroad in 1868, it was reorganized as the Louisville Southern Railway (LS), with construction commencing on a route between Louisville and Harrodsburg in 1884.
In 1888, the LS began construction of the Lexington to Lawrenceburg Division, a spur from Lawrenceburg to Lexington via Versailles, 2 which involved the erection of a bridge across the Cedar Brook valley at Tyrone.
The ground was broken for the new bridge in 1889 with the first train crossing the bridge on August 21. 1 3 4
Although the LS had high hopes for traffic on the Lexington to Lawrenceburg Division, passenger revenues dwindled with the advent and rise of the automobile leading to the termination of passenger operations on December 27, 1937. 1 Freight traffic, while never significant, remained steady until a derailment at the Tyrone Power Station led to the spur’s closure in 1979. 2 A runaway locomotive on the steep spur destroyed several coal cars.
The LS, which was incorporated into the Southern Railway in 1892, became a part of the Norfolk Southern (NS) in 1980. With few customers remaining along the NS’s Lawrenceburg Division and with maintenance costs mounting on the aging Kentucky River bridge, the line between Lawrenceburg and Versailles was mothballed in November 1985. 1
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Sources
- Castner, Charles. The Encyclopedia of Louisville. “Louisville Southern Railroad.” University Press of Kentucky [Lexington], 2001.
- Powell, Tim. “Young’s High Bridge, Tyrone, Kentucky.” WorldTimZone. 2006.
- “Young’s High Bridge.” Bluegrass Railroad Museum. 18 Sept. 2007.
- Crawford, Byron. “Kentucky bridge believed to be the last of its kind.” Courier-Journal [Louisville], 10 Mar. 1989, p. 6.
