Cincinnati & Eastern Railroad
The Cincinnati & Eastern Railway (C&E) is an active and out-of-service a railroad from Idlewild in Norwood to Portsmouth, Ohio operated today by Norfolk Southern and the Cincinnati East Terminal Railway. At its western terminus, it connected with the Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern (CL&N) and the Pennsylvania Railroad Richmond Division (PRR) and to the Scioto Valley Railway at its eastern terminus.
History
The C&E was chartered as the Cincinnati, Batavia & Williamsburg Railway (CB&W) on January 11, 1876, 5 and was proposed to extend from Cincinnati east to Williamsburg, although the eastern terminus was changed to Portsmouth by May. 4a 5 It was projected that the line would be a coal hauling route from Jackson County. 4a
Construction began almost immediately on the C&E and by October 18, 1876, the line was open from Batavia Junction to Batavia, a distance of 15 miles. 5 By August 4, 1877, the C&E had reached Winchester, a distance of 48 miles. The C&E opened the first portion of a branch to New Richmond from Richmond Junction to Tobasco, a distance of five miles, on March 1, 1878. 5 At its western terminus was a connection to the Cincinnati, Georgetown & Portsmouth Railway (CG&P).
A 5½ mile western extension of the C&E to the Miami Valley Railroad was completed in June. 4b The Miami Valley had proposed a narrow-gauge connection to Cincinnati via a tunnel through the Deer Creek valley. 5 When the Deer Creek tunnel project ran into financial difficulties, the C&E found that its connection to Cincinnati was useless which forced the railroad to enter into receivership on January 27, 1879. Nonetheless, the NEw Richmond branch was extended to Blairville by early 1880 and to New Richmond on March 1, a distance of 14 miles. 5
Excited by the prospects of connecting the C&E with the vast coal reserves of the southern part of the state, shareholders voted to increase the capital stock from $500,000 to $2 million and authorized a bond issue to connect the railroad to Portsmouth and Gallipolis on November 21, 1880. 5
The C&E exited receivership on March 1, 1881, 5 and in February 1882, the company signed a trackage agreement with the Cincinnati Northern to utilize its 3.8 miles of line from Idlewild to Court Street via the Deer Creek valley and two tunnels, finally providing the C&E with a direct connection to its Court Street depot in downtown Cincinnati. 4b The C&E began operations from Court Street on April 4, 1882, 5 with trains departing to Irvington, Winchester, and New Richmond daily. By the end of the year, the C&E’s mainline had been extended to Peebles and to Rarden by May 1883.
The C&E entered receivership again on September 14. 5 Nevertheless, the line was completed to Vera Junction just north of Portsmouth in August 1884, which included a 1,000-foot truss bridge over the Scioto River. 2 5
Gauge Conversion
The C&E began preparations for the conversion of its route to standard gauge shortly after the completion of the railroad to Portsmouth. 5 But by February 1885, the C&E’s finances had not improved and another receiver was appointed for the railroad. The C&E east of Winchester was converted to standard gauge by May but no money had been appropriated for standard gauge cars. 5 A court authorized receiver approved the expenditure of $180,000 to convert the line west of Winchester to standard gauge, but the collapse of the 800-foot Nineveh trestle on the New Richmond branch on August 8 scuttled those plans. 5 The disaster greatly aggravated the railroad’s financial issues and another receiver was appointed who felt it was necessary to reconvert the standard gauge from Winchester to Portsmouth back to narrow gauge in order for the line to generate a profit.
By early 1886, the C&E was once again narrow gauge. 5 The railroad was sold to a representative of the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton (CH&D) on September 1, however, it defaulted on payments and the railroad was resold on January 5, 1887, to H.B. Morehead who formed the Ohio & Northwestern Railroad (O&NW). 5
Separately, the New Richmond branch was sold on September 1, 1866, to William P. DeVou, who reorganized it as the Cincinnati, New Richmond & Ohio River Railroad (CNR&OR). 5 DeVou planned to extend the CNR&OR east to Aberdeen, but by July 1889, the line had ceased operations.
Columbus & Maysville
The Columbus & Maysville (C&M) was incorporated on April 27, 1877, as a railroad between Columbus and Maysville via Washington Court House, Hillsboro, Sardinia, Georgetown, Ripley, and Aberdeen. 5 6 Construction began on the 19 mile Hillsboro to Sardinia segment in 1878, and about 12 miles were completed from Sardinia north by the end of the year, and another 5½ miles were finished by 1879 to the junction of the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad, about 1½ miles west of Hillsboro. 5
The first official run of the C&M was held on May 8, 1879, 8 and the line was subsequently was leased to the C&E. 6 Local interests formed the Hillsboro Railroad Company in 1880 and constructed the Hillsboro Short Line to bring the C&M further into town. 6 7 It was subsequently leased to the C&M.
The C&M resolved to convert the railroad to standard gauge and to extend the line to Aberdeen in May 1880, 5 but no work was completed over financial concerns. 6 The C&M was sold in 1885 to other interests, became insolvent, and on February 12, 1887, was sold to the O&NW. 5 6
Ohio & Northwestern
The O&NW moved immediately to standard gauge the main line from Cincinnati to Portsmouth, which was completed by November 1887. 5 The O&NW then shifted its western terminus to the Little Miami Railroad depot east of downtown Cincinnati. Like its predecessors, the O&NW became insolvent and went into receivership on June 15, 1888.
In February 1889, under receivership, the railroad completed five miles of the long-projected Gallipolis extension from Portsmouth to Sciotoville. 5 The O&NW was sold on March 13, 1890, reorganizing as the Cincinnati, Portsmouth & Virginia Railroad (CP&V) on June 24, 1891.
The C&M was sold separately on May 5, 1890. 5 The CP&V was unwilling to resume the lease on the line but continued to operate over it informally. Fearing abandonment, the town of Hillsboro formed the Hillsboro Railroad, which assumed the lease and began to operate over it as a short line. 6 In December 1900, the shareholders of the CP&V voted to purchase the C&M. 5
The Norfolk & Western (N&W) merged with the CP&V in October 1901, 1 5 with the Cincinnati to Portsmouth segment becoming the N&W Cincinnati Division (Peavine). The Hillsboro branch was acquired by the N&W on July 1, 1902, 6 becoming N&W Hillsboro branch. 5
Later Improvements and Closure
The Scioto River crossing at Vera Junction was replaced with a multi-span truss bridge constructed by the American Bridge Company in 1913. 9 In 1941, a girder span over Dry Run was replaced by the Virginia Bridge Company.
The mainline east of Peebles to Jaybird was realigned in 1947 when a quarry opened along Plum Run that required the line to be rerouted to the north and east. It included a new trestle above Cedar Fork and several miles of new track. 9 The quarry was the source of ballast for the N&W.
In 1982, the N&W consolidated with the Southern Railway to form the Norfolk Southern (NS). 2
NS stopped sourcing its ballast from the quarry at Plum Run in the mid-1980s, ending a significant source of traffic for the Peavine. Because of the sharp curves, steep grades, and a lack of customers, the NS railbanked the Peavine between Peebles and Vera Junction at Portsmouth in 2001.
On March 21, 2014, CCET filed with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to lease and operate the Peavine between Clare (Mariemont) and Williamsburg. NS’s T51 made its last run to Peebles to collect all of its cars and equipment on April 24 before CCET took over operations on April 27. In late 2016, CCET filed with the STB to lease and operate more of the Peavine between Williamsburg and Jaybird Branch east of Peebles, using the line for the storage of cars.
Gallery
Idlewild to Claire Yard
Sardinia to Winchester
Winchester to Seaman
Seaman to Peebles
Peebles to Portsmouth
Hello,
I’m looking for train yards that are no longer being used for pictures?
Jeff,
Do you have any further data or pictures about the 1885 trestle collapse on the Cincinnati & Eastern Railroads bridge over what is now Nine Mile Road in Pierce Township, Ohio? I am leading a master planning effort for the park and nature areas in Pierce Township and some have expressed a desire to incorporate the history of the area in our park planning.
Thirty years ago, I met with the lady who owned the old two story white brick house at Nine Mile and Bradbury in Ninevah. She told me that the three dead and nine injured were laid out on the porch of her house. She also said her son found a few spikes when building his house on the north approach to the trestle. I did a presentation to the New Richmond Historical Society back then, and they should still have my findings in their files. George Hilton’s “American Narrow Gauge Railroad” gave all of page 232 to the two existing pictures of the collapse. The locomotive appears to be a Brooks Locomotive Works 2-6-0, a very common narrow gauge engine of the time. It might have originally belonged to the Dayton and Southeastern RR, but I haven’t been able to prove it. Billy DeVou, who bought the line in 1886 and ran it for only three years, was a slum lord downtown and lived in the corner of a factory. He also owned property on the northwest corner of where the track crossed Nine Mile in a cut south of Davis Road, so he probably flagged the train to go to work. For a while, commuter trains ran from New Richmond to downtown Cincinnati over the CL&N RR to Court Street Station. The line lasted only about eleven years in operation, so it was not a good investment. It apparently sat idle for nine years (1889-1898) until the scrap metal was sold for the Spanish American War. Since the war only lasted four months, it probably never made it there. In Newtown, where Valley Asphalt is today, there was a wye where the train could turn around. In New Richmond, the enginehouse was behind Dee’s Dairy Bar. At the top of Nine Mile near I-275, the power wires are in a wide cut in the hill. Power companies go over hills, not through them. That area was listed as “Gravel Pit”, hence the cut is wide. The line interchanged freight with the Cincinnati, Georgetown, and Portsmouth RR on a wye that is now Jones Lane where Clough Pike crosses the county line. Some of the grade is visible south of Clough in the valley, as well as on both sides of Davis Road on the side of the hill above Nine Mile. It’s a really obscure little line, and I have been collecting what I can find since the 1980s. I bought Hilton’s book just because it had something about this line. After I spent fifty bucks on it, I realized he had just copied an article that I had once written myself!!!!