Appalachia History of Trains Depots of the past

There was a time in our nation's history where the whole country was connected by every little community, every town, even throughout these mountains and the whole country by locomotive, by steel. But nowadays it's just the interstate. It's connected by pavement throughout the whole country. Interstates going everywhere. And that's how it mostly travels nowadays. But back in them days it was a steel track connected the whole country and all the community. We'll take a look at some of the pictures and some of the history of some of these old tracks and the way it used to be in these mountains. Now don't get me wrong, we still use the railroad immensely today, all the time. But it's mostly just for freight carrying minerals like coal and stuff out of these mountains. And these freight cars carrying everything. But back then this was a way of life for people traveling from one town to another, even across the country, train to train. And here's an old map of the railroads back in the day, in the daytime. You could see the major lines. It don't show the little lines like in the coal fields and stuff, but these are the major lines. And here's an old map of L&N Railroad. They was the railroad company in the central part of the Appalachias all the way down to the Gulf Coast. There's a map of them. And here's a map out of Knoxville, Tennessee, all the way down into the Smokies when they used to log the Smokies before it would come apart. Old map. Now here is the L&N main headquarter building they built in the turn of the 1900s there. L&N Station in Knoxville, Tennessee. That's what you look like. Old L&N building. And they started this place and for 132 years it ran and they finally sold it out in 1982 to somebody else. So L&N is no longer really L&N. But this is what the headquarters looks like today. It's a museum now. And these old trains, they hauled a lot of stuff out of these mountains. And these railroads were built primarily to haul coal, lumber, and raw materials out of these Appalachians. They hauled a lot of coal out of these mountains over the years. A lot of coal. All in these little mining camps. Time's gone by. And they done a lot of logging too. Here's a picture of hauling big old logs out of the Smoky Mountains back before it become a national park. And this is the kind of locomotives they used back today. An old steam engine. Looks something like this. Different models. But this is what they used. And these old guys, they worked hard on these railroads keeping them up. This was the lifeline. This was a big job. Now we had a lot of stuff like this building these trusses. It was a dangerous job too at times building all these railroads. Now this is just as important as mining or logging or anything else in these mountains. These guys worked hard. There was a lot of people kept these railroads up. Working on these trusses and stuff. Here's some pictures of the old guys that worked on them. Hard work. But without them, none of these minerals and logging would never come out of these mountains. They even took care of their trains. They would inspect them regularly up underneath them. Make sure everything was still intact. Now they made a lot of old tunnels throughout these Appalachians and throughout the countries. Where does that go? This is an old Cumberland Gap Tunnel. It was built, started building it in 1897. It's still used today. But not like it used to be. The coal fields are gone just about around this area. Now here's the oldest, the longest tunnel in the Appalachians. This is a tunnel called the Claudius Corset Blue Ridge Tunnel in the Blue Ridge Mountains next to Charlottesville. It's just under a mile long. Now they traveled this too with all these people traveling these these railroads and passengers. They traveled throughout this whole area, throughout the whole country. This is the passenger train. Some people went in style like this, first class. Really nice, ain't it? But most people in these mountains couldn't afford nothing like that. They traveled like this from town to town, community to community. They just couldn't afford some of them first class tickets. That's just the way it was. And back during the Depression, a lot of them what they called hobos, they would go from town to town getting on these boxcars and these trains looking for jobs. They traveled all around the country like that. That's part of history. And all the whatever they tried to do to these railroads and inspect these trains and keep them up in these railroads, they still had stuff like this happen. Accidents. Things go wrong. And they had a real bad one here. They had many of them. But here's one in New Market, Tennessee back in 1904. A bad wreck. Killed dozens of people too. This is the pictures of it. It's a lot of tragedies happen like this through these mountains. Accidents. And here's one of a trestle collapse in Claiborne County, Tennessee, just north of Tasman, between Tasman and Cumberland Gap, a lonesome valley. Here's what it used to look like, the trestle, before it collapsed. Big old trestle made out of Georgia pine. Here's what it looked like when it collapsed. Here's a newspaper article, Claiborne County Progress. They had an article on it. You can read up on this. I reckon there was three people killed in this accident, and the rest of them were just seriously injured, but they survived. And they rebuilt this old thing, but still. Here's what she looks like today, the old trestle. It's a big old trestle. Runs alongside Powell River. Here's some of the men that worked on them trestles. They had a hard and dangerous work, and some of them had a lot of accidents, too. Now here's an old turntable, the roundhouse they call it, in Bristol, Tennessee back in the day, where they turned the trains around and worked on it. The old train engines coming in and out of these Appalachians in this small town. Old picture. Now a lot of people used these old depots. A lot of people, think about a lot of people, went to war, left their families, traveled these trains to go overseas to fight for our country. And it's sad to say that a lot of them didn't come home. This is an old picture of Minnesota, Kentucky train depot back in the 40s. Now here's some old pictures of the past of the old depots in the Appalachians. What I have, time gone by. Old L and N railroad trestle here in Minnesota, Kentucky back in the 20s. Harrogate, Tennessee back in the teens. Morristown, Tennessee, probably back in the teens or single digits of 1900. Back in the 40s. Newport, Tennessee. Not sure on some of the dates, this is just the pictures that I've collected. Appalachia, Virginia. Bristol, Virginia. Cookville, Tennessee. That's an old one. Englewood, Kentucky. Old Harlan, Kentucky. A lot of these are just no longer standing. What's left, they've turned them into something else. That's a time of history gone by. Jefferson City, Tennessee. Johnson City, Tennessee. Old Minnesota, Kentucky, 1910. They called it Union Station. I know that was tore down in the early 70s. Old Nida, Tennessee. Rose Hill, Virginia. Not sure on how many of them still standing. Now there's one of the depot in Cumberland Gap. It's been moved now to a different location and rebuilt. It's a nice depot. These old people, this is a way of traveling in these mountains and throughout the country back in the day. But times change like everything else. This is what these locomotives look like that used to pull all these cars, freight, coal, cars of all kinds. So they still run these into Smokies for tourists mostly and occasionally they use them for just you know recreating old history. But they still use them around the Smokies especially around there on the south side of the Smokies. They even used one at Dollywood. They've got a couple of them. But anyway, there's some history. I hope you enjoyed this little video. So I want to thank y'all for watching and I'll see you next time.