In 1912 or so, the L&N was eager to get to the high-quality coal around Hazard KY. This tunnel, 1,300′ or so, was the access.
Hello, Hazard! This is on the north side of Hazard Yard, now plenty of tracks but not much traffic. In its day, though, it was a full-time yard. There was at least one turntable. The circular foundation is still visible. The next post is of the tunnel on the south side of the yard.
I don’t post a lot of pictures of bridges. My buddy’s always saying, “Look at that bridge! You want to stop and take a picture of it?” And I say, “No.” I figure if it’s a mighty truss bridge, then Calvin (Sneed) has already posted it on bridgehunter.com. Otherwise, it’s just trestle…
However, this really sturdy deck girder is a relic of the once-mighty coal-driven railways that the L&N pushed though out of Harlan KY. They built strong. The rails on this trestle have “Tennessee 1938” notations on them. It’s a dead line, but I bet it supported one hell of a lot of tonnage in its day.
The trestle crosses Catron Creek at about 36.79852, -83.33855.
This solidly built double-track 1925 Fort Pitt Bridge Works (Pittsburgh PA) structure spans the Cumberland River just west of CSX’s Loyall Yard. The bridge, in three sections, all box trusses (for a total of around 410′ in length), is at 36.85093, -83.36837. It’s on an active line that winds on into Pineville. This view is looking more or less west. To give you a sense of scale, that’s my buddy standing in the second section on the right hand side of the tracks.
These two open camelback truss bridges, made by “American Bridge Co. of New York U.S.A. 1910” (the plates are the same on both…they’ve survived for 104 years!) are located on a dead L&N line that came out of Cawood KY and joined a line that came from Three-Point KY and moved on to Harlen and, probably, Baxter. The date is right to the line. I don’t know when this line went dead, but both these bridges have been converted to pedestrian use (people walked through the wet cement, scrawled their names and initials, but a date? Not going to happen.) This was part of the Cumberland Valley extension of the L&N that, through interchanges and leasing, heads Lynch and beyond (“To infinity and beyond!“).
This one’s just outside Cawood at 36.78422, -83.23707, looking generally west.
This is the date plate on the above bridge
This bridge is west of the one above. It’s at 36.81457, -83.28791. It’s between Chevrolet and Grays Knob KY (looking NE)
For the last few months, I’ve been recording the train depots (if available) and the post offices of many of the small towns we drift through on any given Sunday. Both the depots and the smaller post offices are slowly going away; the former from neglect, the latter through an excess of penury on the part of the USPS. Here are two standard issue, well-built train depots that have fallen into ungraceful disuse.
First, here’s the Appalachia depot, on the L&N.
And this is Limestone’s depot on the N&S. It was, at one time, a stylish building. No longer.
Blogging the Railroad Tunnels 