Rolling Stock

During the Slow & Easy's earliest years, it boasted at least two dozen items of rolling stock. This is by no means surprising, given that founder William J. Oliver also headed a Knoxville-based railroad car manufacturer. The available photographs from the Knoxville, Sevierville & Eastern and Knoxville & Carolina-eras suggest this equipment was well-maintained, as evidenced by the employees' obvious pride in posing with it. However, decades of financial woes and legal wrangling, along with a shameful lack of capital reinvestment during the road's ownership by Midwest Steel Corporation, reduced its rolling stock to slim pickin's.

As early as World War II, the railcars of the Smoky Mountain Railroad had become ancient relics compared to those of its Class I neighbors, the Southern Railway and Louisville & Nashville Railroad. While the Southern and L&N were operating huge fleets of state-of-the-art passenger and freight cars, the Slow & Easy made do with one antique combine car and a few wooden boxcars and truss-rod flatcars. In fact, the only modern revenue cars one might have spotted in Sevierville during the road's final two decades were those belonging to other lines.

A lack of available company records prevents us from compiling an "all-time" rolling stock listing. However, rosters such as the one that follows from the Official Railway Equipment Register give us periodic "snapshots" of the railroad's holdings over the years.

As compared to the K&C and T&NC-era listings, above, what follows is a roster of the Smoky Mountain's rolling stock during its last days of operation. It was compiled using available records, photographic analysis and the writings of several authors: