Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway: Map, History, Logo

Last revised: October 12, 2026

The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis was chartered on December 11, 1845, as the Nashville & Chattanooga, and it was the first railroad completed in Tennessee. The line opened in February 1854, 152 miles from Nashville to Chattanooga, built to a gauge of 5 feet. In 1873 the company took the name that pointed it at St. Louis. Its own rails reached the Mississippi at Hickman and, later, the Ohio at Paducah, and a lease of Georgia’s Western & Atlantic carried it to Atlanta. The public came to know it as the Dixie Line.

On January 18, 1880, the Louisville & Nashville bought control, 134,000 shares, through Vernon K. Stevenson. The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis kept its own locomotives, its own mark, NCSTL, and its own operation for 77 years. The merger was consummated on August 30, 1957. The locomotives are on their own pages: steam built since 1900, and the all-time diesel roster.

Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis F7As with a freight at Dalton, Georgia, circa 1957

A pair of Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis F7As have a mixed freight at Dalton, Georgia, circa 1957. Clarence Cade photo.

On this page: At a glance · Nashville & Chattanooga · The Western & Atlantic · Hickman, and the name of 1873 · Branches, Memphis, and Paducah · The Dixie Route · Diesels and August 30, 1957 · What is left

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. Mark NCSTL. The Dixie Line
Headquarters	Nashville, Tennessee
Charter	December 11, 1845, Tennessee General Assembly, as the Nashville & Chattanooga
Opened	February 1854. Nashville to Chattanooga, 152 miles
Name	Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, 1873, after the Nashville & Northwestern came into the company
Dates	February 1854 – August 30, 1957
Gauge	5 feet, then 4 feet 8½ inches. The main line was narrowed in 1886
States	Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee
Route miles	About 1,259 in the 1920s
Principal lines	Nashville–Chattanooga–Atlanta, the last leg on the leased Western & Atlantic. Nashville–Memphis. Hickman and Paducah
Control	Louisville & Nashville, January 18, 1880. The NC&StL kept its own operation
Successor	Louisville & Nashville, August 30, 1957. The property later passed to CSX
Steam	Post-1900 roster, 229 engines. Last steam January 4, 1953, H7 No. 406
Diesels	132 locomotives, 1941–1952
Preserved	J3 No. 576, given to Nashville in 1953. Nashville Steam is restoring it
Rosters	Steam, built since 1900 · Diesel roster, all-time

The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway logo. Author’s work.

A charter, a survey, and a tunnel under Cumberland Mountain

The Tennessee General Assembly chartered the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad Company on December 11, 1845, to build from Nashville, on the Cumberland, to Chattanooga, on the Tennessee, and to meet the Western & Atlantic there. The promoters included Vernon K. Stevenson, Alfred Nicholson, Dr. James Overton, James Whiteside, and James Jones. Stevenson sold stock from door to door. The company was organized in January 1848, with Stevenson as its first president.

John Edgar Thomson, then chief engineer of the Georgia Railroad and later president of the Pennsylvania Railroad, surveyed the route in the summer and fall of 1846, including the place where the line would have to pass Cumberland Mountain. The located line ran about 152 miles, through Wartrace and Bell Buckle. A branch from Wartrace served Shelbyville. Stevenson appointed James H. Grant chief engineer. E. D. Sanford and Minor Merriweather assisted him. Thomas C. Bates contracted the tunnel.

Construction began at Chattanooga in 1848. The railroad followed the south bank of the Tennessee west from the city, up Lookout Creek, through Bridgeport and Stevenson, Alabama, and back into Tennessee to the mountain. Work on the Cumberland Mountain tunnel, near Cowan, started early in 1849, before a mile of track had been laid on the route. Crews of enslaved workers, Irish and English immigrants, and local residents sank three vertical shafts and opened eight working faces. They broke through in February 1852. On February 22 the people of Cowan and Winchester marked the breakthrough with a ball and a candlelight procession through the bore. The tunnel is about 2,200 feet long. Track was laid through it in 1853.

Rails reached Murfreesboro on July 4, 1851. With the right of way nearly finished, Stevenson went to England for iron cheaper than the American market offered, and the rail he bought saved the company $50,000. In February 1854 the 152-mile line opened, 5-foot gauge, and through cars could run to Atlanta over the Western & Atlantic.

Georgia’s railroad, and the General

The Western & Atlantic was a state railroad. Georgia founded it on December 21, 1836, and built it north from the Atlanta area. Decatur declined a railroad inside the town, so the southern terminus was set a few miles southwest, at Marthasville, which was renamed Atlanta in 1847. Construction began in 1840. A tunnel of 1,447 feet under Chetoogeta Mountain, near Dalton, was finished in the spring of 1850. The line was 137 miles. The first train reached Chattanooga on May 9, 1850.

In the spring of 1862 James Andrews and a party of Union soldiers seized the Western & Atlantic 4-4-0 General at Big Shanty and ran north. The pursuit that caught them was made aboard the 4-4-0 Texas. The General is preserved at the Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History in Kennesaw.

During the war the United States Military Railroad operated the Nashville & Chattanooga. The line was returned to its owners in September 1865. The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis leased the Western & Atlantic on December 27, 1890, for 29 years, and that lease is how the railroad entered Atlanta. A new lease, executed on May 11, 1917, ran for 50 years from December 27, 1919, to December 27, 1969, at $540,000 a year. A larger tunnel at Tunnel Hill opened in 1928. After the 1957 merger the Louisville & Nashville held the lease through its remaining term.

The road to Hickman, and a name aimed at St. Louis

The Nashville & Northwestern was chartered on January 22, 1852, to build toward Hickman, Kentucky, about 168 miles, with the Hickman & Obion aiding the line on toward Union City. After the war that railroad was taken into the Nashville & Chattanooga. In 1873 the company was renamed the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis. For the next generation the public knew it first as the Tennessee Line and then as the Lookout Mountain Route. The Dixie Line is the name that lasted.

The St. Louis ambition met the Louisville & Nashville. On January 18, 1880, the L&N bought control. The Nashville company remained a separate railroad, with its own officers and its own locomotives. By the turn of the century the map ran southeast to Atlanta on the leased Western & Atlantic, southwest to Memphis, and northwest to Paducah. New shops went up in Nashville, and a union station built jointly with the L&N opened in 1900.

Coal branches, two rivers, and a bridge

The branches filled in around that trunk. The Lebanon Branch, the old Tennessee & Pacific, ran from Nashville to Lebanon and was taken in 1877. At Lebanon the Nashville & Knoxville, later the Tennessee Central, interchanged. The McMinnville & Manchester left Tullahoma and ran 35 miles to McMinnville, reached Sparta in 1884, and then the Bon Air coal field over the Bon Air Railroad. The Winchester & Alabama ran from Decherd to Fayetteville and on to Huntsville, and in 1893 to Hobbs Island. The Tennessee & Coosa, in 1891, connected Guntersville with Gadsden.

Two of the branches had been narrow gauge. The Duck River line was standard-gauged in 1889. The Centreville branch, the Nashville & Tuscaloosa, was standard-gauged in July 1894. The main line itself had been narrowed from 5 feet to 4 feet 8½ inches in 1886. Coal also moved off the Tracy City branch, which left the main line at Cowan and was extended to Palmer in 1918 for the Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad, and off the Sequatchie Valley branch to Pikeville.

Memphis and Paducah both came in 1896, by lease of the Paducah & Memphis and of the Louisville & Nashville lines that had been the Paducah, Tennessee & Alabama and the Tennessee Midland. The last new reach was a bridge across the Ohio at Paducah, built in 1917 jointly with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. Richard E. Prince’s history puts the railroad at its greatest extent in the 1920s, about 1,259 route miles, from the Mississippi and the Ohio through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama to Atlanta.

Official 1919 system map of the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway, Poole Bros., Chicago

An official system map of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, 1919. Poole Bros., Chicago. Connecting railroads are drawn on toward St. Louis. The company’s own track met the Mississippi at Hickman and the Ohio at Paducah.

Cumberland Mountain, and the trains to Florida

The Nashville–Atlanta main line meets the Cumberland range just north of Chattanooga, on grades as steep as 2.5 percent, and the pushers were based at Cowan. The Western & Atlantic Division through north Georgia, and the Nashville Division west to Bruceton, were a series of shorter rises and falls. West Tennessee and Kentucky lay flatter. About half the freight was received from, or delivered to, other railroads: at Paducah, Memphis, Martin, and Nashville on the north, and at Atlanta on the south. Manufactured goods moved south, perishables moved north, and coal came off the branches in southeastern Tennessee.

The passenger main line was the Nashville–Atlanta piece of the Chicago–Florida Dixie Route. North of Nashville the partners were the Chicago & Eastern Illinois and the Louisville & Nashville. South of Atlanta they were the Central of Georgia, the Atlantic Coast Line, and the Florida East Coast. Prince’s list of those Chicago–Florida trains is the Dixie Flyer, the Dixie Limited, the Dixie Express, the Dixie Mail, the Dixieland, the Dixie Flagler, and the Dixiana.

Two of the railroad’s own postwar trains have pages of their own. The Georgian, inaugurated on Sunday, November 17, 1946, ran between St. Louis and Atlanta with the Louisville & Nashville. The City of Memphis, inaugurated on May 17, 1947, was a heavyweight train between Nashville and Memphis, 236.9 miles, trains 5 and 6.

From the yards in 1941 to a merger in 1957

By 1947 well over half the locomotives were more than 30 years old. The post-1900 steam roster runs to 229 engines: the Consolidations that had been the freight power, 51 Mikados, three compound 2-8-8-2s, the Pacifics and Mountains, and 25 4-8-4s, the only modern steam the railroad bought. The class grid, and the last steam run, are on the steam roster. That run was January 4, 1953, when class H7 Consolidation No. 406 brought the Union City, Tennessee, branch freight into Bruceton.

Diesels began in the yards in 1941 and reached the Nashville–Atlanta freight with F3s in 1948 and 1949. GP7s and F7s finished the main line. On those Nashville–Atlanta runs the new power nearly doubled the tonnage a steam crew had been allowed, and by 1951 most mainline trains were diesel. The railroad was fully dieselized in 1953. The all-time fleet is 132 locomotives, on the diesel roster. J3 No. 576 was given to the city of Nashville in 1953 and placed on display in Centennial Park. Nashville Steam moved the engine out of the park in 2019 and is restoring it at the Tennessee Central Railway Museum. A stationary steam test was completed on July 16, 2026. That story is NC&StL No. 576.

The Louisville & Nashville and the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis applied to merge in 1955. The Interstate Commerce Commission released its report and order on March 13, 1957. Both were dated March 1. The order approved the merger into the Louisville & Nashville. The City of Nashville sued in federal court to set the order aside, and a restraining order issued on April 8. The railroads were combined on August 30, 1957, seventy-seven years after the stock purchase of 1880. The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis became part of the L&N’s Nashville and Western & Atlantic divisions.

What is left

The Memphis–Nashville–Chattanooga–Atlanta trunk is still a main line of CSX, and part of the railroad west of Nashville is former Louisville & Nashville track. The Cumberland Mountain tunnel at Cowan is still in service. The corporate name ended on August 30, 1957. The locomotives that carried it, and the numbers the Louisville & Nashville gave them, are on the two roster pages.

Sources

Charter of the Nashville & Chattanooga Railroad, Tennessee, December 11, 1845, as cited by later Tennessee acts and by the History of Davidson County, Tennessee. American Railroad Journal, for the organization in January 1848, with V. K. Stevenson as the first president
National Register of Historic Places nomination, Cowan Tunnel, reference 77001270. Work begun early in 1849. James H. Grant, chief engineer, appointed by V. K. Stevenson, assisted by E. D. Sanford and Minor Merriweather. Thomas C. Bates, contractor. Three shafts, eight faces, breakthrough in February 1852, and the February 22 celebration at Cowan and Winchester
Tennessee Magazine, January 2024, “Tracking Change.” Thomson’s survey in the summer and fall of 1846, the line through Wartrace and Bell Buckle, and a tunnel of about 2,200 feet on a route of about 152 miles
Stuart Covington, “NC&StL: Dixie Success Story,” Trains, January 1948. Stevenson’s purchase of English rail, a saving of $50,000, and the opening in February 1854 of the 152-mile line at 5-foot gauge
Richard E. Prince, Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway: History and Steam Locomotives (1967; Indiana University Press, 2001). Return from the U.S. Military Railroad in September 1865. The 1873 name, after the Nashville & Northwestern. The Tennessee Line and the Lookout Mountain Route. Western & Atlantic lease, 1890. Memphis and Paducah, 1896. About 1,259 miles in the 1920s. Louisville & Nashville control in 1880 and 77 years of separate operation. The Chicago–Florida trains named in the Dixie Route section
Journal of the House of Representatives of the State of Georgia, June 1917, and the Western & Atlantic lease executed May 11, 1917. The NC&StL lease of December 27, 1890, for 29 years. The succeeding lease, December 27, 1919, to December 27, 1969, at $540,000 a year. City of Chattanooga v. Louisville & Nashville Railroad Co., for the same lease dates and for the Louisville & Nashville succeeding as lessee in 1957 under the lease then in force
Dain L. Schult, Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis: A History of “The Dixie Line” (Lynchburg: TLC Publishing, 2002). Rails into Murfreesboro on July 4, 1851. The branch outline: Lebanon in 1877, McMinnville and Sparta, Huntsville and Hobbs Island, the Tennessee & Coosa, Tracy City and Palmer, and the Sequatchie Valley
George W. Hilton, American Narrow Gauge Railroads. Duck River line standard-gauged in 1889. Centreville branch, the Nashville & Tuscaloosa, standard-gauged in July 1894
George H. Drury, Guide to North American Steam Locomotives, revised edition, pages 226–227. Chapter by Charles B. Castner. Grades and the Cowan pushers, the interchange freight, the Nashville shops and the union station of 1900, the Paducah bridge of 1917, the age of the fleet in 1947, dieselization, and the last steam run on January 4, 1953. No. 576 given to Nashville in 1953
City of Nashville v. United States, 155 F. Supp. 98 (M.D. Tenn. 1957). Interstate Commerce Commission report and order dated March 1, 1957, released March 13, 1957. The city’s suit and the restraining order of April 8, 1957. Consummation of the merger on August 30, 1957, as printed on the Louisville & Nashville page
The City of Memphis page, for May 17, 1947, trains 5 and 6, and 236.9 miles. The Georgian page, for the inauguration on Sunday, November 17, 1946
Nashville Steam Preservation Society, for the 2019 move of No. 576 from Centennial Park and the restoration at the Tennessee Central Railway Museum. Trains, for the stationary steam test completed on July 16, 2026
Poole Bros., Chicago, the 1919 system map reproduced above

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