Jackson is a city in and the county seat of Madison County, Tennessee, United States. Located 70 miles (110 km) east of Memphis, it is a regional center of trade for West Tennessee. Its total population was 68,205 as of the 2020 United States census. Jackson is the primary city of the Jackson, Tennessee metropolitan area, which is included in the Jackson-Humboldt, Tennessee combined statistical area. Jackson is Madison County's largest city, and the second-largest city in West Tennessee after Memphis. It is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for West Tennessee, as Jackson was the major city in the west when the court was established in 1834.
Vaughan is an unincorporated community in Yazoo County, Mississippi.
John Luther "Casey" Jones was an American railroader who was killed when his passenger train collided with a stalled freight train in Vaughan, Mississippi.
The City of New Orleans is a long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak in the Central United States between Chicago and New Orleans. The overnight train takes about 191⁄2 hours to complete its 934-mile (1,503 km) route, making major stops in Champaign–Urbana, Carbondale, Memphis, and Jackson.
The Southern Railway was a class 1 railroad based in the Southern United States between 1894 and 1982, when it merged with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) to form the Norfolk Southern Railway. The railroad was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894.
The Illinois Central Railroad, sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the Central United States. Its primary routes connected Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama, and thus, the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Another line connected Chicago west to Sioux City, Iowa (1870), while smaller branches reached Omaha, Nebraska (1899) from Fort Dodge, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1877), from Cherokee, Iowa. The IC also ran service to Miami, Florida, on trackage owned by other railroads.
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States.
The St. Louis–San Francisco Railway, commonly known as the "Frisco", was a railroad that operated in the Midwest and South Central United States from 1876 to November 21, 1980. At the end of 1970, it operated 4,547 miles (7,318 km) of road on 6,574 miles (10,580 km) of track, not including subsidiaries Quanah, Acme and Pacific Railway and the Alabama, Tennessee and Northern Railroad; that year, it reported 12,795 million ton-miles of revenue freight and no passengers. It was purchased and absorbed into the Burlington Northern Railroad in 1980. Despite its name, it never came close to San Francisco.
The Gulf, Mobile and Ohio was a Class I railroad in the central United States whose primary routes extended from Mobile, Alabama, and New Orleans, Louisiana, to St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri, as well as Chicago, Illinois.
A fireman, stoker or boilerman, is a person whose occupation it is to tend the fire for the running of a boiler, heating a building, or powering a steam engine. Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal, into the boiler's firebox. On steam locomotives the title fireman is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the title is usually stoker. The German word Heizer is equivalent and in Dutch the word stoker is mostly used too. The United States Navy referred to them as watertenders.
The SD45 is a six-axle diesel-electric locomotive class built by General Motors Electro-Motive Division between 1965 and 1971. It has an EMD 645E3 twenty-cylinder engine generating 3,600 hp (2,680 kW) on the same frame as the SD38, SD39, SD40, and SDP40. As of 2023, most SD45s have been retired, scrapped or rebuilt to SD40-2 standards.
A train driver is a person who operates a train, railcar, or other rail transport vehicle. The driver is in charge of and is responsible for the mechanical operation of the train, train speed, and all of the train handling. Train drivers must follow certain guidelines for driving a train safely.
Memphis Central Station, referred to as Grand Central Station prior to 1944, is a passenger terminal in Memphis, Tennessee. Located along Main Street and G.E. Patterson Boulevard in Downtown Memphis, it currently a service stop for Amtrak's City of New Orleans route, arriving in late evening northbound and in the morning southbound. It is also served by the MATA Trolley system. The building was opened in 1914, and is located within the city's South Main Arts District. It is also an contributing property to the South Main Street Historic District of the National Register of Historic Places, as are the National Civil Rights Museum and other historic properties within the district boundaries.
The Brave Engineer is a 1950 Walt Disney-produced animated short film, based on the exploits of legendary railroad engineer John Luther "Casey" Jones. It is narrated by comic Jerry Colonna and is a comedically madcap fanciful re-telling of the story related in the Wallace Saunders ballad, later made famous by Eddie Newton and T. Lawrence Seibert. It was also released fifty years after Jones was killed.
Casey Jones is an American Western television series syndicated during the 1957–58 television season. It was based upon the life of late 19th-century engineer Casey Jones in the era of pioneering western railroads. Casey Jones also aired on both the BBC and ITV in the United Kingdom and on the Seven Network in Australia.
"The Ballad of Casey Jones", also known as "Casey Jones, the Brave Engineer" or simply "Casey Jones", is a traditional American folk song about railroad engineer Casey Jones and his death at the controls of the train he was driving. It tells of how Jones and his fireman Sim Webb raced their locomotive to make up for lost time, but discovered another train ahead of them on the line, and how Jones remained on board to try to stop the train as Webb jumped to safety. It is song number 3247 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
Mississippi Central Railroad is a short line railroad that operates three disconnected tracks: 51 miles from Oxford, Mississippi to Grand Junction, Tennessee; 11 miles in Iuka Mississippi, and 46 miles from Corinth, Mississippi to Red Bay, Alabama. It was formerly owned by Pioneer Railcorp, which was acquired by Patriot Rail. The railroad's principal commodities are aggregates and food products. The MSCI offers connections to the BNSF Railway in Holly Springs, the Norfolk Southern Railway in Grand Junction, and Canadian Pacific Kansas City in Corinth.
Illinois Central No. 790 is a preserved 2-8-0 “Consolidation” steam locomotive, built by ALCO’s Cooke Works in 1903. In 1959, No. 790 was saved from scrap and purchased by Lou Keller, and he used it to pull excursion trains in Iowa. In 1965, the locomotive was sold to a New York businessman, who, in turn, sold it the following year to F. Nelson Blount, the founder of Steamtown, U.S.A.. As of 2024, No. 790 is on static display at Steamtown National Historic Site in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
James Theodore Harahan (1841–1912) was an American businessman. He was the president of the Illinois Central Railroad from 1906 to 1911.
The Grenada Railroad is a 228-mile long (290 km) shortline railroad that runs from Southaven, Mississippi to Canton, Mississippi, along the former Illinois Central Railroad trackage operated by Gulf & Atlantic Railways LLC.
