Columbus and Xenia Railroad

The Columbus and Xenia Railroad was an Ohio railroad chartered on March 12, 1844 to build a 54.7-mile line between Columbus and Xenia, completing the first direct rail connection from Columbus to Cincinnati by joining the Little Miami Railroad existing route. Construction began in October 1847 under company president Alfred Kelley, a financier and former Cleveland mayor who raised the needed capital by selling bonds in New York after the cost ran to about 1.4 million dollars, well above an original 600,000-dollar estimate. Regular service began February 27, 1850, and the line was an early Ohio adopter of T-rail track. In 1869 the company leased itself permanently to the Little Miami Railroad, which was in turn leased to the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad and eventually folded into the Pennsylvania Railroad system; operations on the original route continued until December 22, 1941. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/