Photographers caught evidence of this last weekend as an empty CSX tank car train moved north on the former Clinchfield main line from Bostic, N.C., to Russell, Ky. CSX had closed that route in October as part of a strategy to focus traffic along three main corridors between metropolitan New York, Chicago, and Jacksonville, Fla. — dubbed the CSX of Tomorrow strategy.
It was unclear if CSX’s new CEO E. Hunter Harrison would hew to that strategy when he took control of the company in March and began closing yard humps throughout the CSX network. Test trains through coal country would seem to indicate a change of plans.
The Clinchfield route is the famed former main line of the Clinchfield Railroad and as recently as the 2000s saw more than a dozen loaded coal trains a day. The route also hosted manifest and intermodal trains.
UPDATED: Story with background from 2016. April 12, 2017, 4:20 p.m. Central time.
