The Tennessee Railroad
The Tennessee Railroad was a 41-mile railroad line from Oneida to Devonia in Anderson County, following Paint Rock Creek from Oneida to New River near Winona, and New River for the remainder of the route into Anderson County. The railroad was originally constructed in the 1890s to reach coal mines along the headwaters of Paint Rock Creek near Oneida.
Beginnings
According to history books, a “Dr. Gruno” who served as a Union physician during the Civil War was a surveyor on the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad that was built through Scott County in the 1880s, and discovered large coal deposits along the headwaters of Paint Rock Creek east of Oneida.
Gruno’s first name, his hometown, and other identifying information are not known.
The headwaters of Paint Rock Creek are located between Tunnel Hill east of Oneida and Cherry Fork.
After discovering coal, Gruno brought onboard investors that included W.M. Appelby (or Applebee) and Robert Hibbler to form the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company.
The Paint Rock company began construction of a short-line railroad at the Oneida depot on the Cincinnati-Southern Railroad to Morning Glory, near where Stanley Creek empties into Paint Rock Creek, in 1889.
The biggest obstacle for the railroad was a large hill along the headwaters of Paint Rock Creek. Crews tunneled through the hillside, creating a 402-foot-long tunnel lined with timbers, and leading to the name Tunnel Hill.
Beyond Tunnel Hill, the grade into the valley was 3.6% at its steepest point, severely limiting the number of cars that engines could pull up the hill.
Lumber company days
The New River Lumber Company — which was headquartered in Cincinnati, Oh. with operations on the so-called Bird Lands in the New River Valley — opened a large sawmill at Norma in 1886. The settlement was known as Norcross at the time.
In 1902, the Paint Rock Coal & Coke Company was sold to investors from New York. In 1905, the railroad sold again, to a career railroad executive named Samuel Spencer.
Spencer had served in the Confederate army during the Civil War, and worked as a railroad manager for much of his life. He began as a surveyor and worked his way up, eventually becoming president of the Southern Railroad.
Spencer was killed in a Thanksgiving morning train crash in Virginia in 1906. He was heading to his hunting lodge in North Carolina and was 59 at the time. There is a statue of Spencer in Midtown Atlanta, and the town of Spencer, N.C. is named for him.
Spencer reorganized the Paint Rock railroad as the Tennessee Railroad. He realized that the New River Lumber Company could benefit from rail access to move its lumber out of the New River valley to the Southern Railroad, and that the best way to accomplish this was by extending the existing rail line to Paint Rock Creek.
By the time of Spencer’s death in 1906, the railroad had been extended down Paint Rock Creek to New River, and up New River to the Norma mill. Following his death, his son, Henry B. Spencer, took over the Tennessee Railroad and continued to build it southward along New River. Henry Spencer was a vice president for Southern Railroad, and later formed Fruit Growers Express, a line of refrigerated freight cars designed to move perishable goods over the rails. Its sales had reached $35 million annually by the time Spencer retired in 1948.
Completion of the railroad
By 1912, the Tennessee Railroad had reached Campbell County. By 1925, it reached Fork Mountain near the New River headquarters in Anderson County. The Devonia depot at Fork Mountain served as the end of the line.
Two branch lines were built along the railroad: the Dean branch, which was 3.5 miles long, and the Clinchmore branch, which was 4.5 miles long. Both were built to reach coal mining operations along New River.
Life on the Tennessee Railroad
Three Shay steam locomotives operated on the Tennessee Railroad. One of them was owned by the New River Lumber Company, and two others were leased. A “hill run” engine was stationed at Stanley Junction on Paint Rock Creek, and was used to help pull the train up the steep grade along Tunnel Hill to Oneida.
In addition to the steep grade, there were three 16-degree curves on the railroad. It was estimated that the hill doubled the railroad’s operating expenses. Engineers considered alternatives to move the railroad and avoid Tunnel Hill — one of which was to link up with the old Knoxville & Ohio Railroad in Jellico, which would have required digging a tunnel through the Cumberland Mountains. Another was to build a route over Fork Mountain and into Petros, linking with the Harriman & Northeastern Railroad. Both ideas were abandoned because they were considered cost-prohibitive.
As late as the 1960s, ideas were considered for rerouting the railroad. One of the last ideas was to follow a logging route from Brimstone to Newtown.
The Railroad’s Decline
The Tennessee Railroad was never a huge financial success, but it remained financially viable as long as mining operations flourished in places like Roach Creek (Dean), Clinchmore and Montgomery. The flood of 1929 damaged the railroad, but it took only two weeks for crews to have trains rolling along the line again.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the old steam engines were replaced with diesel engines. But in 1959, the Tennessee Railroad filed for abandonment. Timber-cutting operations had ended in the New River valley, and it was becoming more common to move coal by road rather than rail.
The Southern Railroad era
The Southern Railroad purchased the Tennessee Railroad in February 1973. One of its first moves was to daylight the tunnel at Tunnel Hill by removing the top of the tunnel.
As recently as 1980, 125 cars filled with coal were being pulled over the Tennessee Railroad each day. Coal shipping continued on the railroad until 2004, when Norfolk Southern — the successor of Southern Railroad — declared its intent to abandon the railroad.
The modern era
National Coal Company purchased the Tennessee Railroad from Norfolk Southern in 2006, at a cost of $3 million. The coal company had purchased mineral rights on more than 65,000 acres of mountain lands surrounding Norma and Smokey Junction, and had also purchased the Baldwin coal preparation plant near Devonia, which was originally built by Oneida-based West Coal Company.
National Coal spent $5 million to renovate the railroad and the coal plant, but struggled to find new buyers and eventually declared bankruptcy.
A passenger excursion train began operating on the Tennessee Railroad in 2008. The New River Scenic Railway was owned by Scotty Phillips and Jimmy Byrge and had a station in Huntsville.
In 2010, National Coal sold the Baldwin plant and its mining operations to Ranger Energy for $11.8 million, and sold the railroad to Kentucky-based R.J. Corman for $3 million. One of Corman’s first moves was to put a stop to excursion train traffic on its rails; the New River Scenic Railway ceased to exist.
In March 2020, R.J. Corman filed a notice of its intent to abandon the line with the federal Surface Transportation Board. A bid by an Oklahoma-based company to take over the line was rejected by the STB in 2021, clearing the way for Corman to follow through on its intent to abandon the line. Corman contracted with National Salvage to take up the steel rails and wooden ties, a process that is nearly complete as of 2025.
Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning, an Oak Ridge-based nonprofit conservation group, filed a Notification of Interim Trail Use (NITU) with the STB, requiring Corman to leave the railroad corridor intact, including the sub grade and all bridges. The intent is to develop a recreational trail along the line that would be used by hikers and bicyclists.
Read More: The Tennessee New River Trail proposal