Knox and Kane Railroad

Infobox SG rail
railroad_name= Knox and Kane Railroad
logo_filename=
logo_size
marks=KKRR
locale=Northwestern Pennsylvania
start_year=1986
end_year=2008
hq_city=Marienville, Pennsylvania

The Knox and Kane Railroad was a short line railroad in Pennsylvania that operated between Knox, in Clarion County, to Kane and then on to Mount Jewett, in McKean County.

The track and right of way was bought from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad when the B&O discontinued operations on the old Northern Subdivision between Foxburg and Kane. This line was a part of the old Pittsburgh and Western Railroad, originally a 3-foot (92 cm) narrow-gauge line created in the latter third of the 19th century from a merging of various earlier narrow-gauge lines.

When the segment of the B&O from Foxburg to Knox was taken out of service, shipping raw materials, mostly glassmaking sand, to Knox Glass became difficult. To ease this situation, a connection with the Conrail (originally the New York Central Railroad) line through Shippenville was put in place. The B&O and NYC crossed each other not too far west of Shippenville for many years, but there had never been provision for interchange between the two roads. Operations in to Knox, which had been the original southern terminus of the K&K, were discontinued around the time the only real customer in Knox, the Knox glass bottle company, ceased operations. This ended the use of the Shippenville interchange.

After the Knox segment was embargoed, the southern terminus became what was known as North Clarion Junction, where there was a fibreboard plant and a wye, the tail track of which had been the P&W's line across to the east side of the Clarion River to the borough of Clarion (county seat of Clarion County). This branch was discontinued at around the time the B&O purchased the P&W. The bridge over the Clarion River needed replacement and the railroad requested that the town help with funding the project. Clarion's town fathers declined this honor, so the railroad cut back service to the west side of the river, which was eventually abandoned as well.

At one time, the K&K derived some revenue from shipping out car loadings of coal from what had once been an extensive coal mining complex in and around the village of Lucinda, a few miles north of North Clarion Junction. During the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s, under B&O ownership, coal loadings from this area were quite extensive. A conductor's report from one northbound freight train [Foxburg to Kane] in the early 1960s showed in excess of fifty loads of coal shipped north out of Lucinda, most of it bound for ports on the Great Lakes. The last coal shipper on the line, Zacheryl Coal, went bankrupt not too many years after the K&K acquired the line, which materially reduced shipping over the line, and thus reduced income.

The K&K also ran a tourist railroad operation over the segment of the line from Kane to Marienville (originally the site of another of the Knox Glass Bottle Company's plants), and back to Kane. A Tangshan Locomotive and Rolling Stock Works-built 2-8-2 steam locomotive was acquired to power the tourist trains, also the K&K has a 2-8-0 steam locomotive, a Baldwin Built. As the B&O never saw a need to turn locomotives at Marienville, there was no wye or turntable in that community. So the K&K built a wye there, specifically to turn its steam locomotive. There was also a four bay roundhouse built in Marienville. Today, the roundhouse is in a considerable amount of disrepair, with three of the four tracks having been removed.

In the spring of 2006, the K&K ceased both freight and tourist service. One reason was that freight shipments over the line had declined seriously over the years. A second reason is that track condition on the line had deteriorated to the point that a large amount of money would be required to bring the track up to the point where it could safely be used. The owning company apparently either could not afford the cost of repairs or wanted a large amount of state and local governmental funding for the project and embargoed the line as a ploy to gain government assistance. Since the close in 2006 the Knox and Kane Railroad had only used their motive power 4 times. The last time was June 14, 2007 moving the two steam locomotives to their Kane facility.

An additional reason the line was abandoned as a tourist operation was that the main attraction of the ride was a trip over the Kinzua Bridge. The viaduct was extensively damaged by a tornado in 2003. When the State of Pennsylvania, which owns the viaduct, could not afford to repair it, the railroad lost its major tourist draw.

In another devastating blow, on early Sunday March 16, 2008 the locomotives used to carry sightseers across the Kinzua Bridge were severely damaged by a fire set by arsonists. [Vosler, A. (2008, March 17). Arson fire in Kane causes $1 million in damage, severely burns two locomotives once used for Kinzua Bridge State Park tourist trips. In The Bradford Era. Retrieved March 17, 2008, from The Bradford Era Newspaper Web site: http://bradfordera.com/articles/2008/03/17/news/doc47dddf1dd9a36852794356.txt] The fire, which burned the Biddle Street building used to house the trains in Kane, Pennsylvania caused $1 million in damage. The residents of Mount Jewett would watch the train several times daily as it passed through town—directly to the north of the borough building. This further dampened the dream of reopening the railroad.

On October 10 and 11 the railroad's rolling stock will be auctioned off as part of a liquidation sale. The fate of the railroad had finally been sealed. However, the tracks and property of the former Northern Sub. will remain indefinately. The Kovalchick Corporation (which also owns the East Broad Top Railroad) bought the property, and hopes to improve the line and run newer trains over it. However, if there are not enough funds or customers for the line, it will possibly be scrapped. [ [http://www.kanerepublican.com/content/view/68432/1/] , "The Kane Republican", 2008-09-26. Accessed 2008-09-30.]

References

*"Running up the Stumps", "The Sentinel", Spring, 2002, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Historical Society, Baltimore, MD.