L&N in Clark County: The Patio yards

One of the major func­tions of the Patio yards was mak­ing up coal trains head­ed to or com­ing from the east­ern Kentucky coal region.  The L&N line to Ravenna and Hazard, known as its Eastern Kentucky Division, became their major coal route.  After pass­ing through Hazard, trains had access to the min­ing areas of Perry and Letcher Counties, and served the col­or­ful­ly named coal towns of Jeff, Viper, Leatherwood, Blackey, Mayking, and Fleming-Neon. 

During World War II, coal fueled the nation’s defense indus­tries.  Though hard to imag­ine today, in 1942 approx­i­mate­ly 1,500 coal cars passed through Patio each day. 

For more effi­cient trans­port, rail­roads lat­er adopt­ed unit trains that car­ried a sin­gle com­mod­i­ty.  Coal trains of 100 or more cars stretched over a mile long.  They could car­ry 10,000 to 15,000 tons of coal from mines to elec­tric gen­er­at­ing plants.

As the Louisville & Nashville Railroad grew to a 6,000-mile sys­tem, it became a vital trans­porta­tion link between the Gulf Coast and the nation’s heart­land.  Its reli­able ser­vice earned the nick­name, “The Old Reliable.”  Then came the era of cor­po­rate mergers. 

While the L&N’s rail lines are still in use today, the com­pa­ny itself no longer exists as a cor­po­rate enti­ty.  In 1982 the L&N was absorbed by the Seaboard Coast Line.  Then in 1986 Seaboard merged with the C&O and B&O (the Chessie System) to become CSX Transportation.

In recent times, coal mar­kets have dwin­dled, and the num­ber of coal trains com­ing through Patio has also declined.  In 2016 CSX idled a large sec­tion of the Eastern Kentucky Division, and it seems like­ly that the future will bring more closures.

I am grate­ful to rail pho­tog­ra­ph­er Garland McKee for per­mis­sion to repro­duce his work in this series of arti­cles.  Garland lives in Lexington and, after fifty plus years, still goes on the road to pho­to­graph trains.