The Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad

The Cincinnati and Muskingum Valley Railroad connected Trinway, OH with Morrow, OH. At Trinway, it seamlessly connected to Cleveland Akron & Columbus Railroad, of whom both lines were part of the Pennsylvania Railroad System.



Incorporated in 1851, the road began construction from Morrow and reached Zanesville five years later, reaching its full extent in 1870. After an 1863 foreclosure, it was reorganized as the Cincinnati & Zanesville Railroad, only for the Pennsylvania to assume control of the line seven years later, when it was extended to Trinway. It formally merged with the aforementioned CA&C Railroad in 1911.

Right of way at the red arrow. Image: Map showing the route and connections of the Bellaire, Zanesville and Cincinnati Railway. Library of Congress

The line continued to operate under Pennsylvania's control in its entirety until the 1950's, when passenger service was abolished. But by the 1970's, Pennsylvania's successor railroads, the Penn Central Railroad and Conrail began to abandon large parts of the line,

Cincinnati & Muskingum Valley (PRR Zanesville Branch) trestle along Kunker Road in Salem Township, looking west along the top of the trestle. Image: Jeffrey B. Jakucyk

Save for a small stretch of operation at Circleville, an 89 mile stretch of line has been abandoned between Morrow, OH to Lancaster, OH, as is a 5.7 mile stretch between North Berne and Bremen, OH, and finally a 15 mile stretch between Zanesville and Trinway notated on the map as Killbuck, OH to N of Zanesville, OH, as since the entire stretch of that right of way is abandoned and was under Pennsylvania control or its successors for the vast majority of its life, it was given a single line on the map. 

The 89 mile mainline abandonment on our Abandoned Railroad Map.

Finally, between Washington Court House and Wilmington, OH, the line was closely paralleled by the B&O Railroad, and this line still survives to this day. This section of the line is now the Clinton Fayette Friendship Trail. The rest of the line not mentioned above remains in service today.

Thanks as always for reading!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Underwater Water Slide: Fly Over at Durinrell TikiBad

Image
Have you ever wished to experience being transferred from one pool of liquid to another via a pipe? Had you visited the Dutch water park known as Durinrell , also known as Tikibad before 2010, you would have had the chance. Half water slide, half war crime, this was a unique water slide that was filled to the brim with water, leaving riders completely submerged throughout the journey. Image:  XtremeRidesNL Known as the Fly Over was an underwater water slide, which is exactly how it sounds, and transported riders from one pool to another using the water as propulsion. Built in 1994, riders dove underwater to access the slide, using gravity to transport them upwards via the Communicating Vessels Principle . Riders would be completely underwater for about 15-20 seconds. This is how I imagine those 15-20 seconds felt like while riding the slide. The slide was built to drain water in five seconds or less in case a rider got stuck in the slide or had a medical emergency, but the threat...
Read more

Railroad Vocabulary: A List of Words and Phrases Used in the Industry - Updated February 2024

Image
As somebody who enjoyed watching trains, but was not an employee of the railroad industry ( at least growing up ), when I would interact with railfans and historians, there was often a lot of technical jargon that applied only to the railroad industry thrown back and forth that made it difficult for a newcomer to understand what they were talking about. For example, what is a dinky? It's actually a passenger train. This non-inclusive language seems to keep the loop closed to members of the community, and to uncouple (no pun intended) that technical jargon and help make it easier for people to communicate with people in the industry, I am creating a list of railroad vocabulary that I'm hoping will make the industry more transparent.  BNSF 2361 . Image: Matt Flores While I ultimately believe that such technical jargon has no place outside of perhaps technical communications between employees, I know quite well that I alone am not going to stop people from communicating in a non-i...
Read more

The Abandoned Railroad Map of Washington State

Image
As we've done for the States of Illinois , Rhode Island and Florida , we've completed a static map of Abandoned and Out of Service Railroad Lines based on the abandonments, railbanked corridors, and out-of-service lines in the State of Washington. Abandoned/Out-of-Service Railroad Corridors in Washington State, 2021. FRRandP creation in QGIS using Mapbox Streets v10 as a background and state/county lines from US Census data. Clicking on this image will bring up the map in its original size. This data was gathered by us over the last five years and is available on our Abandoned & Out of Service Railroad Lines Map , and where we had missing/incomplete data, we pulled data from the WSDOT GIS Data Catalog , who maintains a shapefile of railroads active and abandoned in the State. Neither ours nor WSDOT's data is completely encompassing however, as there are numerous logging railroads that have not been mapped, many of which have little/no traces left, similar to our map in...
Read more