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The Blue Blazes: A Brief History of the
Lancaster and Chester Railway

For more than a century, the Lancaster and Chester Railway of South Carolina had hauled freight back and forth over its 29 mile route. Hurrianes, derailments, two world wars, and a great depression could not keep this little line down. It was forever profitable and busy. But as prolific as it was, it had never increased the miles of track it operated. Not until March 25, 2001, when the L&C accessed the former Southern SB line, having entered into a lease-purchase agreement with Norfolk Southern just that week to operate the SB trackage in Lancaster County.

For more about this segment of track in its pre-L&C days, I point you to Wateree to Kings Creek Norfolk-Southern . It is difficult to pin point which rail line came through Lancaster first. My hunch is that it was the SB line, but I have not come across that yet in my research. What follows is what I have on the Lancaster and Chester.

In 1873, the Cheraw and Chester Railroad Company was granted a charter by a Special Act of the South Carolina General Assembly "to construct a railroad from Cheraw, in Chesterfield County, to Chesterville, in Chester County, by such route as shall be found most suitable and advantageous."

In those days, railroads were often built in sections using different contractors and money sometimes ran out before the line was tied together. This happened to the Cheraw and Chester. In 1879, it made it the 22 miles from Chester County to the Catawba River but did not cross it. On the other end, rail was laid from Cheraw to Pageland before the capital was exhausted in that direction. It operated for three years in these sections before being split. The Chester section was leased to the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta who built a wooden bridge across the Catawba and extended the track one mile beyond Lancaster in 1883. It was then leased to the Richmond and Danville, which in turn went into receivership. Meanwhile, the line from Cheraw to Pageland became the Chesterfield and Pageland but never extended any further.

The receivers for the Richmond and Danville operated the line from Lancaster to Lenoir as one railroad, but neglected to pay expenses. It soon returned the Cheraw and Chester to its stockholders. Two years later, in 1896, the railroad was sold by court order at an advertised auction for $25,000 to satisfy its debts. Its buyer, Colonel Leroy Springs, renamed the line the Lancaster and Chester Railway and organized a company to run it.

In addition to Leroy Springs, the incorporators of the new railroad were William Ganson, R.C. McManus, W.T. Gregory, L.C. Payseur, James M. Heath and W.H. Hardin. All of the men were from Lancaster save for Hardin who was from Chester. The capital stock of the company was $50,000. On June 22, 1896, Hardin, also Manager of the Chesterville and Lenior, was elected Manager and Auditor of the line.

Colonel Springs did not have any personal experience in the railroad business. His interest in purchasing the line may have stemmed in part from the fact that his father, Andrew Baxter Springs, had been one of the contractors and directors for the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta, which helped form the towns of Rock Hill and Fort Mill, South Carolina. His grandfather, John Springs III, had been an early investor of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company, the nations first operating railroad, and had the privilege of having one of its early engines named after him in the days when engines were named instead of numbered. The Colonel’s brother was President of the Atlantic, Tennessee and Ohio that proceeded from Charlotte to Taylorsville before it ran out of capital. When he would refer to the AT&O in front of fellow businessmen, Colonel Springs would claim to be President of the Lancaster, Klondike and Manila Western.

Although the railroad business as a whole was not prosperous, the newly created L&C did not have to look far for business. Colonel Springs had recently completed a textile mill in Lancaster to go with the mills he already owned in Chester, all of which supplied traffic to the railroad. Other businesses in both towns were also served by the L&C. The line connected with the Southern Railway at both ends; with Carolina & Northwestern (itself later part of Southern) at Chester; and with Seaboard Air Line at Fort Lawn.

In 1899, both the Catawba River Trestle and Lancaster Depot burned a few months apart from one another. The cost to replace both structures nearly equaled what Colonel Springs and his associates paid for the Railway three years earlier. However, this misfortune did allow the line an opportunity to upgrade by building a steel trestle to replace the original wooden one.

For the first six years of its existence, the Lancaster and Chester Railway had the distinct disadvantage of being a narrow gauge railroad. Thus, it was impossible to exchange cars with the main lines, which were standard gauge. Freight had to be unloaded from the main line cars in Lancaster or Chester and reloaded onto the smaller L&C cars and visa versa. Also, the L&C engines had to burn wood because the coal mines were on standard gauge lines and it was not economical to reload the coal onto smaller cars.

In 1902, Colonel Springs borrowed $125,000 from the Southern Railway to convert the L&C rails to standard gauge. The Railway also bought new coal burning locomotives as well as new rail cars. The East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad purchased the old rolling stock from the L&C. By 1913, the L&C owned three steam locomotives, nineteen box cars, two coal cars, two passenger cars and two combines. Capital stock had risen from $50,000 to $500,000. Things were going well for the small railroad.

Oddly enough, then as now, odd numbered ran eastbound and even-numbered trains ran westbound, against traditional railroad operating procedure. The reason for this is because before Colonel Springs bought the railroad, trains ran through from points north of Chester. Thus, they started their runs as southbound trains which, like westbound trains, normally have odd-digit numbers. They kept their odd-numbers all the way to Lancaster on the Chester and Cheraw, even after they turned east at Chester.

Later that year, the Lancaster and Chester was persuaded to run a special passenger train to carry fans to a baseball series in Chester County between Chester and Dillon. There were as many passengers on this one train as the L&C ordinarily carried in an entire year. To make the most of the trip, several empty coal cars were attached in front of the passenger cars. When the train reached the Hooper Creek Trestle, one of the hopper cars derailed, taking the three coaches into the creek forty feet below. Every person aboard was badly shaken or injured and five lives were lost.

The seventy-one personal injury claims totaled more than $130,000, nearly causing the L&C to go bankrupt. Two weeks after the Hooper Creek derailment, a fire destroyed the Lancaster Depot, which also served as a warehouse for the mill, costing the Railway an additional $75,000. It took Colonel Springs two years to emerge from the Court House with his railroad intact. He then was able to borrow enough money to get the line operating again.

For a short time, it seemed the L&C was on its way to becoming solvent again.

Then, in 1916, a hurricane-generated flood washed away the three span Catawba River Trestle as well as the Cane Creek Trestle near the Lancaster Plant. For weeks, the L&C detoured over the Southern line to Catawba Junction and the Seaboard line to Fort Lawn to connect with its own line. A ferry was then built to take the place of the trestle but this proved to be both slow and expensive.

A new trestle would have cost $90,000, more than the railroad was worth before the old trestle was lost. The Southern Railway was not interested in taking the railroad back and building a new trestle. For a year, the option of abandoning operations and taking up the rails to sell for scrap was considered. A stroke of luck was needed to save the Railway.

Colonel Springs then heard of a main line trestle that was about to be abandoned by the railroad that owned it so they could replace it with a trestle that had double tracks. An added bonus was that the trestle also included a bridge for automobiles. Colonel Springs bought this trestle and then sold it to the county for what he had paid for it. He was left with only the expense of moving the trestle to the Catawba and attaching it to the stone piers of the old trestle that were spared by the flood. That the new trestle fit the piers of the old one was the stroke of luck that the L&C needed.

The Lancaster and Chester resumed operations just in time to be taken over by the government during World War I.

Colonel Springs passed away in April, 1931 leaving his empire to his only child, Elliott White Springs . (Another source on Elliott Springs .) Elliott Springs was born just weeks after his father purchased the L&C and had a genuine love for the Railway. Under his leadership, The L&C began to prosper in the latter part of that decade on the eve of the Second World War. In 1939, he brought the L&C national attention when he purchased the Loretto. The Loretto was a rail car that had originally been built for the former president of U.S. Steel, Charles M. Schwab. Springs carefully preserved the splendor of the forty-year old car’s Victorian design--Cuban mahogany paneling, crystal chandelier, velvet draperies, marble bath and gold-plated beds. He had the Loretto remodeled for office use, then parked it on a siding near the White homestead in Fort Mill.

(Interestingly, the Loretto is alive and well in 2001. She is currently on display at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC.)

Springs had a flair for colorful advertising, anything to broaden the image of his company and the L&C. One of the things he remains best remembered for is the menu he wrote and printed for the L&C dining car. This menu included: Long Island Ugly Duckling stuffed with Turnip Greens and Pearl Onions, Cannibal Sandwich with real collar buttons, Pork Barrel stuffed with Republican, Drawn and Quartered Democrat Roasted in Own Jacket and Elliott Springs with Garlic and Chlorophyll. Also offered were an alligator pear for one dollar and a pair of alligators for two dollars. Dessert was watermelon Jane Russell, pitted grapes and potted dates. That the L&C did not actually own a dining car at the time did not matter.

Springs rarely did anything in a small way and usually had fun doing it. It was his idea to appoint 29 vice-presidents to the Railway, one for each mile of track. They included playwright Charles MacArthur, golfer Bobby Jones, artist James Montgomery Flagg, writer Lucius Bebe, radio man Lowell Thomas and his wartime friends Billy Bishop and Clayton Knight. Another one of these fictional vice-presidents was Hamond Fisher, who seldom drew a freight train in his Joe Palooka strip without labeling it Lancaster and Chester.

However, it was striptease artist Gypsy Rose Lee, named 'vice-president in charge of unveiling,' who got the most attention. Lee was brought to the attention of Springs by his friend, Agnew Bahnson of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was a devoted fan of the rails who kept models of famous trains in her basement.

In addition to providing menus for dining cars that did not exist and the naming of the colorful vice-presidents, Springs listed a timetable for trains that likewise did not exist. They included The Shrinking Violet, The Black Label, The Purple Cow, The Red Rose, The White Horse and The Blue Blazes.

However, none of this is to say that Elliott Springs did not take his career as a railroader seriously. When the New York, New Haven and Hartford denied his request for a pass by writing that they were granted only to those lines that generated traffic for its route, he wrote back. "I note that the New Haven does not consider the L&C Railway of sufficient importance to honor its officials with an annual pass. I have personally routed some two hundred carloads over the New Haven in the past three or four months but you may rest assured that I will do otherwise in the future."

When Springs moved into his office at the new company headquarters in Fort Mill, he found himself with a four foot high and 120 foot long blank space on his walls. He proposed a mural of his railroad, the Lancaster and Chester, but several aerial photographers insisted this would be impossible. In spite of this, Springs sent well-known photographer Elliott Lyman Fisher up with company pilot Cecil Neal. They flew up and down the line until Fisher had photographed every foot of track--villages, mills, woodlands and fields. When several mountings of the prints failed to satisfy Springs, Fisher colored each slide by hand. One hundred and eighty lights illuminated the slides from the rear giving them a three dimensional effect. The mounting of the mural allowed Springs to inspect his railroad any time he wished.

In 1946, the L&C upgraded its fleet by buying six diesel locomotives from the U.S. Army. These 65-ton Whitcomb locomotives had seen service in Italy during the war and burned about the same amount of oil to run that the old steam engines used for lubrication. The purchase of these engines made the L&C the first fully diesel-operated railroad in the state, something that Springs liked to boast of. The steam engines formerly used by the railroad were either sold or put out to pasture. However, these diesels did not spend long on the line as they were replaced by three 70-ton six hundred horsepower GEs in late 1950.

In 1951, Gypsy Rose Lee was on hand in Lancaster to 'unveil' the new Williamsburg-style depot. Her six-year old son, Erik, was also present and was photographed with his mother in the cab of one of the L&C’s locomotives. In addition, Springs gave the L&C its slogan, The Springmaid Line. He also outfitted a Rolls-Royce as a high rail inspection vehicle. In the late 50s, the Railway adopted a light blue, gray and white paint scheme to replace the dark blue and white scheme of earlier diesels.

Elliott Springs passed away in 1959 and his son in-law, H.W. Close, became president of Springs and the L&C. In 1961, a steel shop and engine house was built in Lancaster to replace the wood structure that was currently in use. In late 1965, the GE diesels were replaced by two new EMD SW900s. They were given the numbers 90 and 91 and are still in use by the Railway on a regular basis in late 2001. These locomotives handled the traffic on the line -- much of the time making two freight runs a day -- until December, 1984, when an additional EMD SW900 was added to the fleet and given the number 92. In 1996, two EMD SW1500's, numbered 95 and 96, were added, followed by four EMD SW1200s in 1998, which were numbered 93, 94, 97 and 98. In 2001, the line leased two more ex-Conrails units from Locomotive Leasing Partners, or LLPX, SW1500 #215 and SW1001 #91.

The L&C added another aspect to its operation in 1996 when Bob Willetts began a passenger car restoration program in Lancaster. The J.P. Henderson car was the first to come out of Lancaster. It is currently in charter service on Amtrak. In the late 70s, this car had been in storage in New York and a state of disrepair. It was bought, then moved to Hartsville, South Carolina where a total renovation began. It went back into service in 1989 and was later bought by the Lancaster and Chester.

With the recent agreement between the Lancaster and Chester and Norfolk Southern, the line has doubled in route mileage. It is the first expansion in route milage since the inception of the L&C more than one hundred years ago.

Carolina Rails
Hinson's Unofficial Lancaster and Chester Railway Home Page
Outlook: A Look Ahead for the Lancaster and Chester
An All Time Diesel Roster for the L&C
Hinson's Railroad Photography: Shortlines of the Carolinas
Hinson's Railroad Photography: Class 1 Carriers
Trainspotting on the L&C
Other Railroads in Lancaster and Chester
Carolina Shortlines Guide
Bibliography and Acknowledgment Page
Hinson's Interchange Page

This page is not endorsed or affiliated with the Lancaster and Chester Railway.