The Louisville, Harrods Creek and Westport Railway was a 19th-century

railway company A railway company is a company within the rail industry. It can be a manufacturing firm or an rail transport operations, operator. Some railway companies operate both the trains and the track, while, particularly in the European Union, operation ...

in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia ...

. Its first president was James Callahan. It was organized by Louisvillian businessmen in 1870, began construction and operation of the The Louisville & Nashville Railroad, 1850-1963
/ref> narrow gauge railway in 1872, and failed in 1879 owing to the era's

Long Depression The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in 1873 and running either through March 1879, or 1896, depending on the metrics used. It was most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing st ...

. The line then gave up hope of connecting to Westport or beyond and reincorporated as the more modest Louisville, Harrods Creek and Westport Rail''road'', which simply continued service along the existing track. The railroad began at First and River roads in

Louisville Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border. ...

and ran along Fulton Street. It reached the to Goose Creek by 1874 and finished construction about above

Harrods Creek Harrods Creek is a neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky centered near Harrods Creek at the intersection of River Road and Wolf Pen Branch Road. It is roughly bordered by the Ohio River to the west and US 42 to the east. Its ZIP code is 40027. Fo ...

in 1877. The company charter was amended to permit consolidation with other lines (including a proposed "Westport, Carrollton and Covington Railroad" expansion) but the line's failure ended those plans.Castner, Charles. ''The Encyclopedia of Louisville''
p. 251
"Louisville, Harrods Creek, & Westport Railway". University Press of Kentucky (Lexington), 2001. Accessed 15 October 2013. The line was responsible for the settlement and name of the Louisville suburb of Prospect. It later made up part of the Louisville and Nashville network and its former rights-of-way currently form parts of the class-I CSX Transportation system.

References

Defunct Kentucky railroads Defunct companies based in Louisville, Kentucky Transportation in Louisville, Kentucky Narrow gauge railroads in Kentucky 3 ft gauge railways in the United States Railway companies established in 1870 Railway companies disestablished in 1879 {{Louisville-stub

See also

References