Railroad buffs, historians, and casual readers alike will be delighted by the reappearance in print of Richard E. Prince's Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. Originally published in 1967, its reputation as the foremost work on this railroad is still untarnished after more than 30 years.The NC & StL Railway originated in 1845 as the Nashville and Chattanooga RR. Taken over by the Union Army during the Civil War, it suffered extensive damage from Confederate attack but was rebuilt and operated by the U.S. Military Railroad for over two years. Returned to its owners in September 1865, it became the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Ry. in 1873 after absorbing the Nashville & Northwestern RR.During the next 25 years, it became known to the public first as the Tennessee Line, then as the Lookout Mountain Route. In 1890 it gained entrance into Atlanta as lessee of the state-owned Western & Atlantic RR. Paducah and Memphis were reached in 1896 when lines of the former Paducah, Tennessee & Alabama RR. were leased from L & N. At its zenith in the 1920s it operated approximately 1259 miles of track from the Mississippi and Ohio rivers through Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama, to Atlanta, Georgia.In 1880, to eliminate the threat of competition that was developing between the two companies, the Louisville & Nashville RR acquired control of the NC & StL Ry, much to the dismay of the citizens of Nashville, and for the next 77 years it operated as a prosperous subsidiary of the Old Reliable. It was actually absorbed of the L & N organisation in 1957 to become part of the Nashville and W & A divisions. But it will always be remembered by the people of Tennessee and Georgia as the original Dixie Line - the route of such Chicago-Florida passenger trains as the Dixie Flyer, Dixie Limited, Dixie Express, Dixie Mail, Dixieland, Dixie Flagler, and Dixiana.