Cincinnati & Eastern Railroad
The Cincinnati & Eastern Railway (C&E) is an active and out-of-service a railroad between Claire near Cincinnati, Ohio east to Portsmouth, operated today by the Cincinnati Eastern Railroad. 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
Proposed to extend between Cincinnati and Williamsburg, the Cincinnati, Batavia & Williamsburg Railway (CB&W) was chartered on January 11, 1876. 5 The name was changed to the Cincinnati & Eastern Railroad (C&E) and the eastern terminus was modified to Portsmouth by May, and it was projected that the C&E would become a primary coal-hauling route from the Jackson County coalfields. 4a 5
Construction began almost immediately on the C&E and by October 18, 1876, the route was open for 15 miles between Batavia Junction and Batavia. 5 By August 4, 1877, the line had reached Winchester, a distance of 48 miles. The C&E opened five miles of a branch towards New Richmond from the Cincinnati, Georgetown & Portsmouth Railway at Richmond Junction to Tobasco on March 1, 1878. 5
A 5½-mile western extension of the C&E to the Miami Valley Railroad (MV) was completed in June. 4b The MV had proposed a narrow-gauge connection to Cincinnati via a tunnel through the Deer Creek valley, but after the Deer Creek tunnel project ran into financial difficulties, the C&E found that its connection to Cincinnati was useless and forced the carrier to enter into receivership on January 27, 1879. 5 Nonetheless, the New Richmond branch was extended to Blairsville by early 1880 and to New Richmond on March 1, a distance of 14 miles.
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 finish the railroad from Winchester to Portsmouth, and to then build an extension to Gallipolis on November 21, 1880. 5
The C&E exited receivership on March 1, 1881. 5 In February 1882, the railroad signed an agreement with the Cincinnati Northern to use 3.8 miles of its line between Idlewild and Court Street via the Deer Creek valley to provide the C&E with a direct connection to its Court Street depot in downtown Cincinnati. 4b The C&E began operations with daily runs to Irvington, Winchester, and New Richmond from Court Street on April 4, 1882. 5 The C&E mainline had been finished to Peebles by the close of the year, to Rarden by May 1883, and to the Scioto Valley Railway at Vera Junction just north of Portsmouth in August 1884, which included the erection of a 1,000-foot crossing of the Scioto River. 2 5 The high expense of the bridge and building an alignment through the Scioto Brush Creek valley caused the C&E to enter receivership again on September 14. 5
Gauge Conversion
The C&E began preparation to convert its route from narrow-gauge to standard-gauge shortly after the completion of its railroad to Portsmouth. 5 But by February 1885, tits finances had not improved and another receiver was appointed for the railroad. The C&E east of Winchester to Vera Junction had been converted to standard gauge by May but no money had been appropriated for standard gauge cars. 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. 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). Separately, the New Richmond branch was sold to William P. DeVou on September 1, 1866, who reorganized it as the Cincinnati, New Richmond & Ohio River Railroad (CNR&OR). DeVou planned to extend the CNR&OR east to Aberdeen but the line had ceased operations by July 1889.
Columbus & Maysville
The Columbus & Maysville (C&M) was incorporated to connect Columbus and Maysville, Kentucky via Washington Court House, Hillsboro, Sardinia, Georgetown, Ripley, and Aberdeen on April 27, 1877. 5 6 Construction began on the 19-mile Hillsboro to Sardinia segment in 1878, and 12 miles of the C&M were finished by the end of the year, followed by another 5½-miles to the junction of the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad 1½ miles west of Hillsboro by 1879. 5
The first train operated over the C&M on May 8, 1879, 8 after which 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.
Built to narrow-gauge standards, the C&M was converted to standard-gauge in early 1880, and extended to Aberdeen by May. 5 No further work on the railroad was completed over financial concerns. 6 The C&M was sold to other interests in 1885, became insolvent, and sold to the O&NW on February 12, 1887. 5 6
Ohio & Northwestern
The O&NW moved immediately to standard gauge the ex-C&E mainline between Cincinnati to Portsmouth which was completed by November 1887. 5 The O&NW then shifted its western terminus from the Cincinnati Northern depot to the Little Miami Railroad depot. Like its predecessors, the O&NW became insolvent and went into receivership on June 15, 1888.
Under receivership, the O&NW completed five miles of its long-awaited Gallipolis extension between Portsmouth and Sciotoville in February 1889. 5 The O&NW was sold on March 13, 1890, and reorganized 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, assumed the lease, and began to operate over it as a short line 6 until December 1900, when the CP&V voted to purchase the Hillsboro Railroad. 5
The Norfolk & Western (N&W) merged with the CP&V in October 1901, 1 5 and the Cincinnati to Vera Junction (Portsmouth) segment becoming the N&W Cincinnati Division (nicknamed the Peavine). The Hillsboro branch was acquired by the N&W and became the N&W Hillsboro Branch on July 1, 1902. 5 6
Later Improvements and Closure
The Scioto River crossing at Vera Junction was replaced with new multi-span truss bridges fabricated by the American Bridge Company in 1913. 9 The mainline between Peebles and Jaybird was realigned in 1947 when a quarry opened along Plum Run that required the line to be rerouted, which included the erection of a new trestle above Cedar Fork and the laying of several miles of new track. The quarry became the primary source of ballast for the N&W and added a significant amount of traffic to the Portsmouth Branch until the mid-1980s.
Because of the Portsmouth Branch’s sharp curves, steep grades, and a lack of customers, Norfolk Southern (N&W’s successor 2) railbanked the Peavine between Peebles and Vera Junction in 2001. On March 21, 2014, the Cincinnati Eastern Railroad (CCET) filed with the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to lease and operate the Portsmouth Branch 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 the CCET took over operations on April 27.
In late 2016, the CCET filed with the STB to lease and operate more of the Portsmouth Branch between Williamsburg and Plum Run east of Peebles for the storage of cars. The railroad filed with the STB to extend the lease with the goal of restarting railroad operations at the Plum Run quarry. 10
Gallery
Idlewild to Claire Yard
Sardinia to Winchester
Winchester to Seaman
Seaman to Peebles
Peebles to Portsmouth
how would someone obtain rail ways for a short transport ride, say about 4 or 5 communities for the elderly and convenience of commuting? would have to file for grants and work on getting it together, but is it even a possibility?
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!!!!