Hocking Valley Scenic Railway

The Hocking Valley Scenic Railway begins its lineage in April 1864 when the Mineral Railroad is chartered to build a line between Columbus and Athens, a project that is renamed the Columbus & Hocking Valley Railroad in 1867 and completed in stages from 1868 to 1870, with the inaugural passenger train running on July 25, 1870. After a series of mergers—the Columbus and Toledo Railroad and the Ohio and West Virginia Railway combine in 1881, the system is reorganized as the Hocking Valley Railway in 1899, and the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway absorbs it in May 1930—passenger service ends on December 31, 1949 and the last C&O freight “Nelsonville Turn” ceases around 1980. The modern tourist operation is founded in 1972 by Frank L. McCauley, Ted Goodman and Jerry Ballard, initially running over seven miles of the former Monday Creek Branch to Carbon Hill; volunteers purchase a former Lake Superior & Ishpeming 2‑8‑0 locomotive in 1968 and, between 1975 and 1976, construct the first indoor engine house in Nelsonville, moving the locomotive there permanently in 1976. A new depot based on a historic Hocking Valley prototype is completed in 1982 (designed by Ted Goodman, funded by the Baird Trust Foundation, with lumber donated by Mike Nolan), while the railroad shifts northward in the early 1980s, acquires its first diesel switcher in 1981, and scrapes the remaining Monday Creek trackage in 1983. By 1995 the original engine‑house lease is lost, and new federal boiler regulations force the sidelining of the steam locomotive at the close of the 1996 season, marking a pivotal transition for the nonprofit heritage line.