Cincinnati Northern

Company History: The story of the Cincinnati Northern is the railroad equivalent of the folk song classic I’m My Own Grandpa. In 1894, the Cincinnati Jackson & Mackinaw Railway was working to improve their route into Cincinnati, Ohio by launching the Dayton & Cincinnati Terminal Railroad to build a line between its namesake cities including a tunnel under Walnut Hills. They soon learned that Cincinnati Railway Tunnel Company had the exclusive franchise from the city of Cincinnati to build a tunnel under Walnut Hills but the tunnel had never been completed and the CRTCo was in financial limbo. So the CJ&M bought CRTCo’s first-mortgage bonds and foreclosed on them. The franchise and the uncompleted tunnel were then transferred to D&CT who then changed their name to Cincinnati Northern Railroad. By 1897, the parent Cincinnati Jackson & Mackinaw defaulted and was foreclosed upon at which point, their former subsidiary Cincinnati Northern bought the CJ&M. Cincinnati Northern was now a 186 mile line from Franklin, Ohio (in greater Cincinnati) north to Jackson, Michigan. Ironically, they never finished the tunnel. In 1901 the Big Four (the CCC&StL, themselves controlled by New York Central) bought control of the Cincinnati Northern and sold the land around the tunnel project. Cincinnati Northern was merged into Big Four in 1938.

Successor/Parent History: The Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway, also known as the Big Four Railroad and commonly abbreviated CCC&StL, was a railroad company in the Midwestern United States. It operated in affiliation with the New York Central system.
Its primary routes were in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. At the end of 1925 it reported 2,391 route-miles and 4,608 track-miles; that year it carried 8180 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 488 million passenger-miles.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.