The Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway (CL&N) was a local passenger and freight-carrying railroad in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio, connecting Cincinnati to Dayton via Lebanon. It was built in the late 19th century to give the town of Lebanon and Warren County better transportation facilities. The railroad was locally known as the "Highland Route", since it followed the ridge between the Little and Great Miami rivers, and was the only line not affected by floods such as the Great Dayton Flood of 1913.

The line was completed in 1881, and the CL&N was formed in 1885. The company went through multiple bankruptcies until the Pennsylvania Railroad gained control in 1896. CL&N continued its own operations until 1921, and existed until 1926, when the parent company merged CL&N and other smaller companies. Except for several years in the mid-1880s, when the line was under control of the narrow gauge Toledo, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad, it was not a major line, in part due to its steep approach to downtown Cincinnati. For this reason, portions of the line have been abandoned, beginning in 1952 with a segment north of Lebanon.

Passenger services from Cincinnati terminated at Lebanon until the early 1900s. Passenger service was eliminated circa 1910 and restored as of 1915, extended to Dayton until 1928. Passenger trains were eliminated entirely in 1934. Conrail, the Pennsylvania Railroad's successor, sold the remaining trackage in the 1980s to the Indiana and Ohio Railway, a short line now owned by Genesee & Wyoming. That company continues to provide local freight service on the ex-CL&N, and the Lebanon Mason Monroe Railroad operates tourist trains on a portion of the line near Lebanon.

History

Planning and grading, 1850–1876 The town of Lebanon, Ohio, laid out in 1802, was bypassed by the Miami and Erie Canal in 1830; the branch Warren County Canal to Lebanon was wrecked by flooding in 1848. The Little Miami Railroad (1846, later a Pennsylvania line) and Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad (1851, later a B&O line) followed the valleys of the Little and Great Miami rivers (the M&E Canal had used the latter), also bypassing the highlands on which Lebanon lay. Residents of the town obtained a legislative charter in March 1850 for the Cincinnati, Lebanon and Xenia Railroad (CL&X), which would extend from Cincinnati northeast through Lebanon to Xenia. At the latter town, the incorporators decided the most likely connection would be the New York and Erie Railroad, which was planning on extending into Ohio. Thus the line was planned to use the Erie's broad gauge.

To enter the city of Cincinnati, the CL&X would join the Dayton and Cincinnati Railroad (D&C), which was planning the double-track Deer Creek Tunnel through the Walnut Hills, at Sharonville (then known as Sharon). Tunnel construction began in late 1852, and the CL&X was finally organized under the charter in November. The CL&X located right-of-way, and began construction in about April 1853, but was forced to stop work by the end of 1855 due to lack of funds. Only grading between Sharon and Lebanon, mostly north of Mason, had been completed. (The tunnel project also failed, and was eventually acquired by the CL&N.) In July 1861, the courts appointed a receiver for the CL&X, who in March 1869 sold the unfinished railroad, which had cost $83,885, to 40 area residents for $4,000. Five trustees would ensure that the property was not sold without a majority of its owners consenting. Twenty years after its canal connection was destroyed, Lebanon was still without a modern connection to the outside world, and its economy continued to stagnate.

The 1870s fad of the narrow gauge railway, which was cheaper than broader gauges to build and operate (for low volumes of traffic), presented a new possibility. The Dayton and South Eastern Railroad (D&SE, later a B&O line) was planning a narrow gauge line from the Jackson County mines through Xenia to Dayton, and a branch from Xenia through Lebanon would connect to the markets at Cincinnati. The editors of the local newspaper, The Western Star, encouraged citizens to support the project, but by taking a more active role and organizing a locally owned railroad company to ensure its completion. Editorials likened the situation to Aesop's fable of Hercules and the Carter, where Hercules tells a stuck carter that he will not assist unless the carter himself is willing to help. In November 1874, residents of Lebanon and the surrounding area organized the narrow gauge Miami Valley Narrow Gauge Railway (renamed Miami Valley Railway in October 1876), which would complete the unfinished CL&X as a branch of the D&SE.

Slow stock subscriptions delayed surveying until June 1875, when a line was located between Xenia and the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad (M&C, later a B&O line) west of Norwood. Property owners in the villages of Norwood and Pleasant Ridge, wishing to develop their land as suburbs, put forward a proposition to relocate the line to the east through their land in exchange for free right-of-way, and to build a steam dummy line between Norwood and the horse car lines in Walnut Hills, which would provide Miami Valley passengers with a more direct entrance to downtown Cincinnati than the circuitous M&C. However, in August, an even more direct route south of Norwood, through the rugged Deer Creek Valley, was suggested, by which the Miami Valley could obtain its own access to Cincinnati. After imposing heavy restrictions, which would require the construction of several trestles and a tunnel, the Cincinnati City Council granted the right-of-way through the valley, including Eden Park, to the railroad company. The owners of the old CL&X grade sold it in April 1876 for $8,000 in stock of the new company, and most of the land outside Cincinnati had been bought by that summer. The Miami Valley resolved in May 1876 to build only north to Waynesville, a village southwest of Xenia, where the projected Waynesville, Port William and Jeffersonville Railroad and Jeffersonville, Mt. Sterling and Columbus Railroad would extend to Columbus, crossing the D&SE at Octa. (The former completed most of its line, but abandoned it in 1887; the latter was able to grade only a portion.)

Construction and early operations, 1876–1885 President Seth S. Haines of Waynesville broke ground in Eden Park on September 1, 1876, although most early work was done outside Cincinnati. The company continued to be plagued by lack of funds, and, despite completion of the grade between Norwood and Waynesville within a year, work soon slowed and eventually stopped in late 1878. Contractor John B. Benedict brought a suit in December for breach of contract, alleging that he was not properly paid. During the trial, two embarrassing facts came to light: Haines and Benedict had signed a "secret contract" giving Haines a portion of the bonds paid to Benedict, and the price of the line south of Norwood had been artificially inflated so that the connecting Cincinnati and Eastern Railway (C&E, later a N&W line) would have to pay more for trackage rights into Cincinnati. However, it was nonpayment of interest on bonds that forced the Miami Valley into receivership in January and foreclosure in March 1880. Another decade had passed and Lebanon still lacked a railroad.

The Toledo, Delphos and Burlington Railroad (TD&B), a growing narrow gauge system with roots in the town of Delphos, would finally give Lebanon its rail line. Together with a group of suburban Cincinnati investors, the TD&B bought the unfinished grade at the foreclosure sale for $61,000 and incorporated the narrow gauge Cincinnati Northern Railway as its successor on June 8, 1880. (The TD&B would also acquire the Dayton and South Eastern in February 1881.) At first the TD&B and Cincinnati-area residents shared stock and management equally, but soon this was changed so that the former party would control all the stock for ease in future consolidation, and the latter would locally manage the road. As the TD&B was in the process of building into Dayton from the north, it was decided that the new company would not use the grade all the way to Waynesville. Instead, the TD&B would construct a connection from the D&SE at a point they called Lebanon Junction, now inside Dayton near the intersection of Woodman and Rainier Drives, to the small village of Dodds. There the Cincinnati Northern would begin, following the Miami Valley's route through Lebanon to Cincinnati. Construction resumed in late 1880, and proceeded rapidly thanks to funding from Ohio and Northeastern capitalists. Mixed train operations between Lebanon and Norwood, where connections could be made with the M&C, began on May 30, 1881, and on September 5 the line was opened south to a streetcar connection at Oak Street, just north of the tunnel. Service was extended through the tunnel to the Eden Park entrance on January 12, 1882, and on February 13 a temporary Cincinnati depot opened just north of Court Street. With the completion of the TD&B's branch from Lebanon Junction to Dodds in December 1881, the Cincinnati-Dayton line was finally complete; Jackson County coal was first shipped over it in February 1882. Two short branches to the suburbs of Montgomery and Avondale—the latter built separately as the Spring Grove, Avondale and Cincinnati Railway (SGA&C)—opened on November 14, 1881 and July 1, 1882, respectively. C&E operations to Court Street began by April 1882, using the Cincinnati Northern south of a junction at Idlewild, and in October the Cincinnati Northern laid tracks across that street into its permanent depot at the southeast corner of the Broadway Street intersection.

The TD&B absorbed its subsidiary, the Toledo, Cincinnati and St. Louis Railroad (TC&StL), in March 1882, and took its name as more descriptive of the growing system, which hoped to become part of a nationwide narrow gauge network stretching southwest to Mexico City. One year later, in May 1883, the Cincinnati Northern and the SGA&C were consolidated into the TC&StL.Interstate Commerce Commission, 42 Val. Rep. 1: Valuation Docket No. 1068, The Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company and its Leased Lines [including the Toledo and Cincinnati Railroad, successor to the TC&StL's Delphos-Dayton line] (1933) However, the TC&StL was constructed cheaply, with poor drainage and little ballast. While the Cincinnati Northern had been built to better standards, the connecting line between Lebanon Junction and Dodds was just as bad. The inadequate facilities and equipment, as well as difficulties in interchanging equipment with lines, contributed to its entering receivership in August 1883. The TC&StL had six divisions at this time. Four of the five TC&StL divisions south of Delphos were sold to their bondholders at auction in June 1884, and separate companies were soon organized for three of those: the Dayton and Toledo Railroad, Dayton and Ironton Railroad, and Iron Railway (named Iron Railroad prior to TC&StL receivership). The Toledo-St. Louis line was sold in December 1885 and reorganized as the Toledo, St. Louis and Kansas City Railroad, commonly known as the Clover Leaf Route. In July, George Hafer of Avondale replaced William J. Craig of Toledo as receiver of the Cincinnati Northern Division, allowing it to recover from Craig's deferred maintenance. Hafer obtained a short-term lease from the trustees of the Dodds-Lebanon Junction line (officially the Cincinnati Division), allowing continued access to Dayton. Finally, on June 27, 1885, the Cincinnati Northern Division was sold for $200,000 to its bondholders, who incorporated the Cincinnati, Lebanon and Northern Railway, with Hafer as president, on July 14 and transferred operations on August 1, 1885. The narrow gauge movement of the 1870s had failed, and all the ex-TC&StL lines were converted to standard gauge within the next ten years.

CL&N, 1885–1926