The Western Kentucky Railway was a

shortline railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...

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 ...

, that connected

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

s with CSX Transportation at Providence. The lines were part of the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad until March 1982, when Costain Coal, Inc. bought the trackage and set up the Tradewater Railway to operate it. In January 1995, the Rail Management and Consulting Corporation acquired the property and transferred it to the new Western Kentucky Railway.Edward A. Lewis, American Shortline Railway Guide, 5th Edition,

Kalmbach Publishing Kalmbach Media (formerly Kalmbach Publishing Co.) is an American publisher of books and magazines, many of them railroad-related, located in Waukesha, Wisconsin. History The company's first publication was ''The Model Railroader'', which be ...

, 1996, pp. 331-332 Genesee & Wyoming Inc. acquired it from the Rail Management Corporation in 2005. In 2010, WKRL abandoned all of its remaining lines north of Providence, and the rails were removed shortly after. The only remaining tracks that were originally owned by WKRL are operated by Martin Marrieta Aggregates' Fredonia Valley Railroad from

Princeton Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...

to Fredonia. When created in 1995, the Western Kentucky Railway owned lines from Providence to a junction at

Blackford Blackford might refer to: People with the surname *Charles Minor Blackford (1833–1903), an American lawyer *Hosea Blackford, a fictional character in books by Harry Turtledove *Ian Blackford, a Scottish politician *Isaac Blackford (1786–1859), ...

, and from Blackford north to Waverly and south to the

Paducah and Louisville Railway The Paducah & Louisville Railway is a Class II railroad that operates freight service between Paducah and Louisville, Kentucky. The line is located entirely within the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The line was purchased from Illinois Central Gu ...

. Most of the north–south line, once the main line of the Ohio Valley Railway (an

Illinois Central Railroad The Illinois Central Railroad , sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also c ...

predecessor) was abandoned in 1995 and 1996, leaving only the piece between Blackford and Dekoven. (The Fredonia Valley Railroad later acquired the section from Princeton to Fredonia.OpenDocument STB Finance Docket No. 33695
January 6, 1999)The rest of the line was then abandoned in 2010 and removed from Providence to Wheatcroft and the surrounding mines.

References

External links

Western Kentucky Railway
{{DEFAULTSORT:Western Kentucky Railway Kentucky railroads Genesee & Wyoming Railway companies established in 1995