Abandoned Tracks in Tennessee

[AFT2101]

I was headed West on SR 68 here in East Tennessee today and just after I passed Watts Bar Nuclear Plant I noticed a old set of RR tracks parallel to SR 68. Rails and ties were still intact but there was some serious vegetation growth.  Tracks went all the way to Spring City, Tennessee where they appeared to merge towards the NS mainline. Anybody know the history, what RR ran on these and when?

[leroy]

Yep... It's the old spur into the Watts Bar Steam Plant... The plant is still there, but is derelect... It sits on the river betweel the Watts Bar Dam and the TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant... It was built pre-TVA (...i think...)...

The spur meets the Southern Railway CNOTP main at Spring City, TN... It was used for coal deliveries the original steam plant (...it had a small dumper that handled 55 ton cars...) and deliveries to TVA during the construction of the  various TVA plants there (...transformers, heavy parts, etc. ...)... The last traffic was probably in the early seventies...

The spur parallels TN 68, just as ya saw, and turns toward the plant about a half a mile from the river... Evidently the ties are in terrible shape and probably cant hold the spike and rail anymore... The TVA doesn't use the spur anymore due to the bad track... They also have barge access on the river near the plant to handle real heavy stuff...

By the way, the "big" siding at Spring City used to be used for produce coming into the old Winter Garden frozen food processing plant (...now gone...)... The plant was located on the east side of US 27... It was a big deal at one time... Lots of perishables in and out by rail....

Hope this helps...
leroy

PS--- E-mail me at if ya have any questions this post doesn't answer.... I spent lots of time at the area around the plant...

[AFT2101]

Yep... It's the old spur into the Watts Bar Steam Plant... The plant is still there, but is derelect... It sits on the river betweel the Watts Bar Dam and the TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant... It was built pre-TVA (...i think...)...

The spur meets the Southern Railway CNOTP main at Spring City, TN... It was used for coal deliveries the original steam plant (...it had a small dumper that handled 55 ton cars...) and deliveries to TVA during the construction of the  various TVA plants there (...transformers, heavy parts, etc. ...)... The last traffic was probably in the early seventies...

The spur parallels TN 68, just as ya saw, and turns toward the plant about a half a mile from the river... Evidently the ties are in terrible shape and probably cant hold the spike and rail anymore... The TVA doesn't use the spur anymore due to the bad track... They also have barge access on the river near the plant to handle real heavy stuff...

By the way, the "big" siding at Spring City used to be used for produce coming into the old Winter Garden frozen food processing plant (...now gone...)... The plant was located on the east side of US 27... It was a big deal at one time... Lots of perishables in and out by rail....

Hope this helps...
leroy

PS--- E-mail me at if ya have any questions this post doesn't answer.... I spent lots of time at the area around the plant...

Thank you! A nice short history lesson there. One thing that really caught my attention was how steep some of the grades were. Up and down over and over in a very short distance.  The trains must have been short to control the slack?

[leroy]

AFT... Thanks for the kindness... I'm a hopeless railroad and industrial history buff...

RE:  The steep grades.... Now that ya mention it, you are right....

My guess is that they took several short cuts of cars in there when the steam plant was takin coal deliveries... The unit is small (...60 MW--- by comparison, one unit at Kingston Fossil plant is 225 MW.... There are 9 units on this site....), so the coal consumption was pretty easy to keep up with...

I did some more diggin on the Watts Bar Fossil Plant and learned it was built between 1940 and 1945... Here is a short pdf that talks a bit about it...

http://www.tn.gov/environment/kingston/pdf/tva/StantecWattsBarAnalysisI.pdf

I had originally thought that the plant was built in the 20's before the TVA... The old Tennessee Electric Power Company had built several little units around east Tennessee before the TVA came around in the 30's....

leroy