Russell's "RU" cabin last of its kind

Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Magazine, May 2001 by Smith, Jesse J

paid my first visit to Russell, Kentucky's "RU" Cabin in 1973. I was a college student in Charleston at the time. Back then, RU was just one of many working cabins, or towers, along the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in that area. "NJ" (Northern Junction, on the Cincinnati Division), "RJ" (Raceland Junction, at the west end of Russell Yard), "BS" (Big Sandy Junction), "KV" (the Kenova interchange with the N&Vi, "HO" (near the OH Building"Official Headquarters" of the Engineering Department-at the west end of Huntington), and "DK" (Huntington) were all within a close 20 miles of RU. Each one at that time was staffed by three operators per day (one per eight-hour "trick"), every day of the year. Already-closed cabins in that same area in 1973 included "MS" (in the middle of the south side of Russell Yard), as well as "NC" and "Clyffeside," located at the west and east ends, respectively, of the passenger main line through Ashland.

Back then, RU was not only indispensable to Russell's operation, but it was also the busiest of all the cabins. Russell Yard (actually five connected yards) was the largest such facility on the C&O, and at one time had been the largest single-road rail yard in the United States. It boasted 240 tracks (182 miles total), including the huge Raceland Car Shop for building C&O's freight equipment, along with the caboose shop there, a large engine terminal (servicing motive power from five C&O subdivisions), and at one time a huge crosstie processing plant of the American Creosoting Company (replaced in 1963 with Chessie's ribbon-rail welding plant).

Crossroads

RU Cabin sat strategically at the east throat of all of this. And Russell was incredibly busy, located at Milepost 524, just ten miles west of BS Junction, where westbound Kanawha and Big Sandy Subdivision coal trains met, sharing on their way to Russell, the busiest mainline trackage on all of the Chesapeake & Ohio. As evidence of Russell's activity, just consider its busiest year ever, 1947, when a staggering 1,997,888 freight cars rolled through the yard!

At RU, the triple-track main line from the east fanned out into (looking west, leftto-right) the Passenger Main Line, the Eastbound Yard, the Manifest Receiving Yard, the Old Yard, and the Westbound (coal) Receiving Yard. Just below the operator's window, the River Lead swung off the main line, leading west past the railroad YMCA to Russell's locomotive terminal and shops.

Upstairs in RU, the operator lined switches, set signals, copied train orders ("flimsies"), and coordinated everything with the dispatchers, with the yardmasters at the Big Four yard office and at the Coal Hump, and with the Head-in Shanty located just down the River Lead. RU took instructions from all of these by intercom and block-line phone, turning their commands (through signal aspect) into actual train movements.

Downstairs in the front room of RU, through big square tinted windows, a check clerk "watched trains by," dictating into a special telephone handset each freight car owner and number as it rolled slowly west, past the cabin into the yard. By phone line, the clerk read each car number into a recording mechanism located in the Coal Hump building two miles away. Other clerks there would quickly transcribe those tapes, providing the yardmasters with "lists" of each track, from which would be made up switch lists for the yard crews and for the hump-tower retarder "conductors." The lists were sent by the clerks at the coal hump to each of the yard offices throughout the Russell Yard by an elaborate system of underground pneumatic tubes. And this check clerk's job at RU (dictating each passing car number) was no menial task. Consider a single day there, November 18, 1949 (Russell's busiest day ever for westbounds), when a record 4,901 freight cars rolled west into the yard, past that attentive check clerk at RU. (That day averaged about 200 cars an hour, all day long.)

Downstairs in RU, in the back "relay room" behind the check clerk's office, rows and rows of old glass-encased relays-more than a hundred-constantly "clicked" their cadence with mechanical precision, meticulously marking the meeting of each train and signal up and down the line.

Outside RU, a maintainer on foot kept the switches and air pipes all in working order. Rather than being either "armstrong" or electrically thrown, by the early 20th century RUs turnouts were air-operated, and the maintainers constantly checked it all, greasing the switch points and inspecting rail joints, frogs and other equipment. An air plant (supplying 70 p.s.i). was located a quarter-mile away at the roundhouse.

The Chesapeake & Ohio had arrived in Russell, Kentucky, in 1887 on its way to Cincinnati. And with those lines from the Queen City and from the east (and from Louisville, and later up the Big Sandy and also down from Columbus), Russell quickly became a key terminal on the C&O's map of operations.

The early 20th century saw railroad business booming in Russell. The opening of the Northern Subdivision to Columbus and Walbridge in 1917 made Russell a vital C&O crossroads. By 1920 the yard was three miles long, a half-mile wide, included over 100 miles of track, and spread across more than 640 acres. The sprawling yard was the only such facility on the C&O to comprise its own operating division (the Russell Division) in the Employee Timetable. By that time, coal business through Russell averaged a quarter-million cars per month.