| By: | Joe Marascalco |
| Dates: | 1/1/1910 - 4/8/2019 |
| Album Info: | Covers the former Illinois Central trackage from Memphis, TN to Canton, MS. This line was once part of the IC's main line between Chicago and New Orleans, and hosted 8 passenger trains per day as late as the 1960's and hosted 2 to 4 piggyback trains per day until the 1990's. Amtrak's City of New Orleans used this line until 1995. Casey Jones had his famous wreck on this line on April 30, 1900.
In the 1990's, then CEO Hunter Harrison decided to reroute all through traffic to the parallel Yazoo District due to this line's flatter profile. The Grenada District suffered from deferred maintenance throughout the Harrison years and was only used for local traffic/detour route until he sold this line in 2009 to V&S Railway, which is an affiliate company of A&K Railroad Materials. This new outfit formed a new company called the Grenada Railway to operate this line.
During the Grenada Railway years, trains stopped running between Grenada and Canton and this segment was put up for abandonment in 2011. This abandonment was stopped due to a legal battle at the Surface Transportation Board led by the State of Mississippi and other concerned citizens, communities, and shippers. In 2013, the Grenada Railway attempted once again to abandon the Grenada to Canton segment but this abandonment was never allowed due to selling this line to the North Mississippi Regional Rail Authority in 2015. The rail authority then reached a lease purchase agreement with Iowa Pacific Holdings. Iowa Pacific operated this line until 2018, when International Rail Partners took over Iowa Pacific's lease purchase agreement with the rail authority.
The entire line was reopened for revenue freight service in 2019. |
