CTC Red Bank line
Chattanooga Traction Company
Red Bank line
Prior to the construction of the Chattanooga Traction Company's Red Bank (or
Dry Valley as it was then known) line, freight service had been provided by
a connection using an incline railway and ferries to a connection with the
Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. When the announcement was made
in 1915 that the company had purchased right-of-way from near Valdeau (the
south end of Red Bank) to a point near Hixson on the CNO&TP main where a
connection would be made for interchanging freight cars.
The line ran north from a junction with the original Signal Mountain line, very
near the intersection of Moccasin Bend Road and Elmwood Drive, through Red Bank
(roughly paralleling Dayton Boulevard), until at Harding Road it branched off
to the northeast, passing through Lupton City and eventually connecting to
the CNO&TP mainline just north of Tenbridge (the railroad's name for the bridge
crossing the Tennessee River below the Chickamauga Dam).
Construction on the line began in November 1915, and operations on the line
began in July of 1916. However, the Company was unable to acquire the copper
wire necessary to permit operation of the electric streetcars and consequently
the route was operated for freight service only. A short time later, in early
1917, the part of the route from the junction with the CNO&TP Railway to
Harding Road was sold to the CNO&TP so that the Traction Company could avoid
coming under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission.
At the same time, the copper wires needed had been acquired and were quickly
installed, with passenger service commencing in March of 1917. However, the
line would only receive about a decade of passenger service before the state
was petitioned by the Company to discontinue passenger service in 1927,
claiming that the line was continuously losing money. While the state originally
granted the company's request, it was subsequently reversed, with the result
that when streetcar service was temporarily restored, passengers had to transfer
cars at the junction with the Signal Mountain line and only the Signal Mountain
route continued to operate into the downtown area. Eventually, the community
agreed to a plan that would replace the streetcars with buses, and at the end
of March 1928 passenger service along the Dry Valley line ended.
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