The CSX Lexington Branch Ashland, KY [HD] 

Interesting, you should make copies of that journal and give those entries to the C&O Historical Society.

I was suprised to see this video with 6 axles going out to the landfill. Old Lex Sub guys told me they only used 4 axles. Hard to believe that line was a high speed route at one time.

Gareld Kazee II So you're currently a hogger or are you retired? CSX did quite a bit of track word on the branch earlier this year so the track could handle six axle engines on the heavy loads from the trash containers. It also simplifies the process as whatever power these trash train have out of New Jersey stays on when it goes onto the branch.

Well I was for 11 years on CSX in Indiana got transfered to Russell in 2007 worked until 2009 when got furloughed got job working as underground coal miner in Martin County KY. Got laid off moved to Tennessee worked for shortline until I got my feet cut off from bad sill step at Shortline Railroad. Now just about recovered from that. Bout closest I get to trains are my C&O HO Scale Locomotives and rolling stock

I would like to be engineer still if I could. Days of conductor are over. I would go back to mining even.

So you've unfortunately been forced to retire because of the accident?

Don't forget the ripping out of the B&O St. Louis Line and the B&O Parkersburg Branch which CSX is still getting crap about to this day.

Yeah, I believe that the Parkersburg branch was probably part of the Midland sub deal, but further East obviously. From what I`ve heard over the years the president of Chessie back then was afraid that Union Pacific was going to come across the Mississippi River and claim the line from Saint Louis to the East coast, so he had it yanked. Not a real bright move considering the rail traffic today. NS did something similar with the Peavine, but at least the tracks are still there and rumor has it that they are going to bring it back at some point when traffic volume requires them to start using it again from Portsmouth Westward to Cincy and beyond. Only time will tell on that one.

1960gambit It's not that he was afraid, the president of Chessie at the time was an idiot who just took the job so that it would look good for him and make him qualified to be part of the president's cabinet. His name was John Snow. BIGGEST MISTAKE for the future of CSX.

1960gambit This is the story of what went down. This story can be found on a certain railroad forum. It was the end of the fiscal year, 1985, John Snow, who was then President of the Chessie System and John Collinson, Chairman of the Board for Chessie, called all of the VP's together to discuss where the company was. Well, the numbers weren't very pretty and the operations department was in the red. Ron Drucker, the VP of Operations, quickly surmised that the Parkersburg "branch" (as it was called), would be a logical way to make up the difference. Drucker had obviously put some time into this as he then began to spew data, numbers, run times, etc...he came prepared to make a solid argument for this line's demise. Druckers plan was to divert the traffic, lay off most train crews, MofW, Signal, clerks, etc...gradually the line would die, and they could rip it out. The not only made up the operation budget deficit, but Drucker pointed immediately to the fact that they could continue to make a better profit by avoiding the operations nightmare that was the Parkersburg Sub (more on that in a bit). In my research, my first question was, Why was it called a "branch"? By this time, summer 1985, traffic was down to four through trains or so per day via Parkersburg and Chillicothe, (two of course being pig trains), most traffic went via Pittsburgh and across Ohio. The concept of main line seemed to be only used for the primary traffic line that ran up and over Sand Patch. Plus, if one traces back the history of this line, it was indeed just a branch line operation and engineered as such in it's building, it was only after the line was strung together with the Marietta and Cincinnati (B&O Ohio Division) and the Ohio and Mississippi (B&O St. Louis Division), when this line became viable. At this point in the meeting, the Marketing VP, Jim Hagan, nearly lost his cookies, he had been there a little over a year and was still getting used to the culture. They (marketing folks) were not prepared for this news and had nothing i n terms of data to defend keeping the line. Snow looked at Hagan for the facts...he could provide none...other then the obvious fact that this move would destroy the St. Louis piggyback traffic (which it did). It's interesting to note that Chessie was really not that big into intermodal, period. Chessie's bread and butter was coal and manifest...particularly auto parts. In fact some at Chessie felt TOFC was less important then general merchandise traffic. It is only after CSX evolved, it was the folks on the Seaboard side that was really driving the intermodal needs. Auto parts traffic was the primary reason this part of the former B&O (Parkerburg Sub) was given some TLC in 1963, after the C&O merger. Clearances were raised accommodate high cubes and some auto racks but not necessarily for TOFC traffic. The tunnels were raised to 17' 2", but not the needed 20' 8" for stacks (again, TOFC was the rage until stacks became more of a rage), this also worked for high cube and most auto racks of the day. However, the tunnel enlargements were about it. Some curves were eased, but these were the real operations issue (not the grades). In fact, Chessie even had problems with some grain trains in high cube hopper cars because of the curves. My research shows that there were several 6 degree curves and one 7 degree curves between Clarksburg and Parkersburg. The Ohio side was a bit better except for the 8 degree curve on the Ohio University campus in Athens. In an interesting twist of irony, it was during the 1963's upgrade when people saw that the traffic could be rerouted over longer routes and still have respectable transit times, perhaps the seed was planted early. So, back to the "big table meeting", you have the realists in the operating department in the facts, and the prognosticators in marketing saying that it's our best guess that we'll get clobbered in the St. Louis market. Snow, being the accountant, went with the numbers...no one cared that TOFC would get slaughtered, they wanted a clear bottom line. This was the beginning of the end. With Marketing not given a chance to defend, operations with the numbers, it was a tough sell to save. Indeed, the TOFC traffic did get slaughtered, and the route up and over Ohio added sometimes days to this schedule. It was a disaster...but no one cared. What TOFC traffic was there (St Louis Trailer Jet and the Manhattan Trailer Jet), dried up when rerouted up and over Ohio and down the Toledo Subdivision back to Cincinnati. Thus ending St. Louis as a viable gateway for intermodal traffic. Only after CSX spent it's money on Conrail are we seeing this begin to change. Plus, as the 80's moved into the 90's CSX was trying to consolidate gateways to the west, at the early part of the 1990's, CSX had four: Chicago, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. Chicago was the one obvious choice, the other was New Orleans. So again, St. Louis was allowed to fizzle out. Add to all of this the changes in global marketing, the slow down of domestic auto sales in the 1980's and the conditions were ripe. So while it is perceived that the line was axed quickly, the operations numbers tell a tale that the line had declined for years (even perhaps as early as the 1960's when the original reroutes took place for the improvements). I am not letting CSX (actually Chessie System) off the hook for it's abandonment, but the numbers were not in the lines favor. There was little local traffic really any place between Chillicothe and Parkersburg (the exception of the Portsmouth Branch at Hamden), the tough operating conditions east of Parkersburg and the downturn of the economy all lead us toward the result we see. In retrospect, many CSX operations folks do lament on this lines removal. Was it a mistake? Perhaps it was...it's hard to tell. With the change in the eastern rail scene its likely the line could have survived. CSX gained a far better route to St. Louis when buying Conrail, but, as we know the cost was staggering.