WWW KC.PENNSYRR.COM

Dayton, Lebanon & Cincinnati Railroad and Terminal Co.

If you ever used a mechanical NCR cash register, it probably traveled on the tracks of the Dayton, Lebanon & Cincinnati. Placed under control of the PRR Dec. 28, 1914, its sale to the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. was finalized during 1915 and it became part of the Pennsy's Cincinnati, Lebanon and Dayton Ry.

The DL&C began in 1881 as a 16.96-mile extension of the narrow gauge Toledo, Delphos & Burlington. Bypassing Dayton, Ohio, (Montgomery Co.) on the east, it would connect the narrow gauge Cincinnati, Lebanon & Northern to the Toledo, Cincinnati & St. Louis narrow gauge empire. It ran from the Cincinnati-based line's northern terminus at Dodds, Ohio, (Warren Co.) to Toledo Junction (in present-day Kettering, Ohio, [Montgomery Co.]) east of Dayton where the narrow gauge Dayton & Southeastern connected with the TD&B.

Opened in early 1882, the line was poorly constructed. Its designers chose to speed construction and reduce costs by not installing a roadbed. The first through train from Cincinnati to Dayton took an hour to reach Lebanon 36 miles away but needed another three days to cover the 21 miles from Lebanon to Toledo Junction and Dayton. While this primitive route did provide an passenger and freight outlet for the CL&N, it did not survive the collapse of the TC&StL. Valiant CL&N train crews continued to operate over the decrepit TC&StL tracks until 1887 when the line served as Cincinnati's .lifeline. The DL&C's and CL&N's route along the divide between the Great Miami and Little Miami rivers kept its tracks high and dry when nearly every other land route into the Queen City of the West wass inundated during a devasting Ohio River flood. Two more times during the next 50 years the DL&C and CL&N would play this role, once for Dayton and agan for Cincinnati.

In the aftermath of the flood, the CL&N stopped running trains north of Dodds. This section of track was out of service for four years. Cincinnati industrialist Henry Lewis purchased the 17-mile DL&C in 1888 to serve limestone quarries near Centerville, Ohio, (Montgomery Co.) south of Dayton. Lewis' plan included plans to build an 8.9-mile connection to Dayton's Union Depot (and joint terminal trackage in the city's central business district used by the Erie Railroad, the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, The Big Four and the Pennsylvania's Panhandle Route) and to provide a connection to the Panhandle or other nearby standard gauge lines.

Reconstruction of the original 16.96-mile line from Dodds to Toledo Junction was completed in January 1891. Trains leased from the CH&D-controlled Dayton, Fort Wayne & Chicago began running from Dodds to Dayton. Lewis converted the line to standard gauge in 1892 as the CL&N also was converting its narrow gauge trackage.

Lewis died in 1893 and construction plans stalled. The DL&C was bought by investors headed by Arthur E. Appleyard. Right-of-way for the line into Dayton was purchased and by November 1902 3.6 miles of track was laid from Hempstead (near the present intersection of Wilmington Pike and Stroop Road In Kettering) to the Dayton State Hospital on Dayton's southern edge.

The DL&C was foreclosed upon in 1903. In 1907 the line was sold to a new group of investors who renamed it the Dayton, Lebanon & Cincinnati Railroad & Terminal Co. The latter reference was for a freight terminal the company located along the Great Miami River levee just south of Dayton's joint mainline terminal trackage. Under the direction of H.L. Sternbarger, construction resumed in April 1909. By November 1.3 miles of new track was completed from the state hospital to NCR's world headquarters and massive cash register manufacturing complex.

Completing the line past NCR's world headquarters into downtown Dayton required a major cutting along the a hill just north of NCR and extensive filling along the banks of the Great Miami River to elevate the tracks at the freight and passenger terminal located at the eastern end of the Washington Street bridge. The final 1.54 miles of track to the terminal property was completed and the line opened for traffic in 1912.

The DC&L now had a 25.29-mile mainline from Dodds to the Dayton terminal that connected with Class 1 union terminal trackage just north of the facility. The original mainline to Toledo junction now was just a 3.63-mile branch. Trackage rights over the CH&D's Wellston division allowed access to the Panhandle's mainline a mile north at Clement Tower on Dayton's east side.

In March 1913 massive floods devastated vast areas of Central and Southern Ohio and Indiana. As the flood water inundated or washed out rails of Pennsylvania's Lines West of Pittsburgh for more than 250 miles, from the steep mountain valleys of western Pennsylvania to western Indiana's broad Wabash River valley, only the D&LC and the C&LN remained open. Running atop the divide between the Great Miami and Little Miami river valleys, the DL&C and CL&N were the only rail lines open into the heart of the devastated area. As the Ohio River was not greatly affected by this flood, relief supplies flowed north into Dayton. This easy access was one reason that the nation's attention focused on Dayton. Until the waters receded, reporters had difficulty getting any further than the center of relief activities, the NCR complex at Dayton.

The CL&N purchased the DL&C in 1914 making it part of the Pennsylvania system. In 1923 it was consolidated into the Pennsylvania, Ohio & Detroit Railroad, a paper organization of five disconnected PRR branches scattered across Ohio, Indiana and Michigan.

The flood-proof nature of the line came into play again during the Ohio River floods of December 1936 and January 1937, the worst Ohio River flood on record,.which devastated the communities along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers from Pittsburgh to the Gulf of Mexico. Relief supplies again flowed south along the Highland Route into Cincinnati, just like 50 years earlier. Those living along the DL&C and CL&N noted that while traffic was greatly increased, light rails used in the tracks and the extremely tight radius of the curved track connecting the DL&C to the union trackage just north of its terminal in Dayton limited motive power locomotives to nothing larger than the PRR's H-10 2-4-0 Consolidations.

The section between Lytle, Ohio, (Greene Co.) and Hageman, Ohio, (Warren Co.) was abandoned in the early 1950s. First constructed without a roadbed, this lightly-traveled section had long been a maintenance headache for Pennsy xection crews. a The line from Centerville into Dayton remained open until the early 1970s. The Penn Central sought its abandonment when NCR halted manufacturing of mechanical cash registers in Dayton. A proposal during the early 1970s to use the right-of-way for a light-rail passenger system serving Dayton's southern suburbs was quickly dropped. Today only a portion of this right-of-way, through the affluent Dayton suburb of Oakwood, is preserved as a bike trail.

Only the old TC&StL main line north of Hemstead remains open to day. Combined with the Panhandle mainline from downtown to Clement tower and the CH&D from Clement south to Lebanon Junction less they form a Conrail spur serving General Motors' Delphi Division (nee Delco) plants in eastern Kettering.

Copyright 1996 - 2008

Last modified: November 24 2007.

Keystone Crossings has served 4818618 pages since June 1, 1997.