CSX Transportation Service Line

                  The Louisville & Nashville Railroad was born out of commercial rivalry among emerging cities from the Ohio River Valley through the South. Louisville's greatest threats to prosperity were Cincinnati and Nashville. The Kentucky Legislature granted a charter on March 5, 1850, for construction of a railroad connecting Louisville with Nashville. "[B]oth towns saw the road as their chief weapon in the battle not only against each other but against such potential outsiders as Cincinnati, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Memphis, and even New Orleans as well. Nor was the contest limited to the major competitors, for every hamlet and county in the vicinity between Louisville and Nashville viewed the project as a potential vehicle for its own prosperity. There ensued a mad scramble among these locales to persuade the new company to locate its line in their backyards" (Klein, 1972:5).
                  Two routes were proposed. The upper route would take the railroad through Bardstown, New Haven, Glasgow, and Scottsville. The lower route would take the railroad through Elizabethtown, Bowling Green, and Franklin. While the upper route was shorter, the lower route posed fewer engineering difficulties and offered a more direct route on to Memphis. Ultimately, the City of Bowling Green was able to outmaneuver the City of Glasgow when a charter was obtained to construct the Bowling Green & Nashville Railroad. The threat of a parallel line from southern Kentucky to Nashville influenced the Louisville & Nashville (L&N) Railroad to adopt the lower route.
                  Completion of the line required significant engineering feats. Most prominent were the tunnel at Muldraugh's Hill near Elizabethtown and a high bridge over the Green River near Munfordville. Service on the 186-mile line between Louisville and Nashville commenced on October 31, 1859. It took about 10 hours for a train to complete the run between the two cities, but this was a substantial improvement over stagecoaches or wagons.
                  Several branch lines tied into the mainline, extending the influence of railroad throughout central and southern Kentucky. The more prominent of these were the Lebanon Branch at Lebanon Junction, which ultimately connected Louisville with Knoxville, Tennessee and Atlanta, Georgia, and the Memphis Branch south of Bowling Green at Memphis Junction.
                  Trains of the old Louisville & Nashville Railroad no longer ride the rails. The L&N was part of a merger that created the Seaboard System Railroad on January 1, 1983. Later, on July 1, 1986, the Seaboard System Railroad name was changed to CSX Transportation.
                  Today, the old Louisville & Nashville mainline is still operated as a vital link in the current CSX Rail Network, playing an important role in the economic development of towns and cities along the line. Louisville is still home to a rail freight yard providing locomotive servicing and rail car repair and offers a rail-to-truck metals facility, a rail-to-truck transloading facility, a rail-to-water coal transfer terminal, and a finished automobile distribution center. The Bowling Green station provides rail car repair service and a rail-to-truck transloading facility.

Sources: Maury Klein (1972) History of the Louisville & Nashville Railroad. New York: Macmillan.
(http://www.csxt.com/abt/communities/ky.htm)