Springfield, Jackson & PomeroyRailroad Co.

 A very rare Springfield, Jackson & PomeroyRailroad stock certificate ( No. 162) issued December 13, 1878 to AW March forOne Share at Springfield, Ohio. The certificate is hand signed by H L Chapman,Vice President. It has a very interesting vignette of a mining scene with acoal train arriving and an embossed Corporate Seal in the lower left corner.Certificate is in excellent condition.

The Springfield, Jackson &Pomeroy was the offshoot of an earlier project, the Dayton & South Eastern,a narrow gauge railroad planned to run from Dayton to Jackson by a circuitousroute that avoided some of the larger hills on a direct alignment. Refusing toaccept a secondary role of having a branch line built to serve Springfield, theSJ&P was born when Springfield interests teamed up with disgruntledtownspeople missed by the Dayton & South Eastern's route.

Both theSJ&P and the D&SE were constructed to provide an outlet for vast coaldeposits and the iron furnaces of the Jackson and Wellston area in an era whenthe narrow gauge fever had struck with a vengeance. Construction of theSJ&P began in a northerly direction from Jackson on December 7, 1876,raising of the $800,000 in capital to start the line having taken two years. OnMarch 26,1877 work started at Springfield and for a brief time the SJ&P wasoperated in two unconnected segments. The last spike was driven July 18, 18/8at Dills, 4/10-mile east of Bainbridge, and a 4-1/2-mile branch to Eureka,south of Jackson, was completed the following June. The SJ&P also builtseveral coal mine spurs in the same area.

Hardtimes, however, soon hit the Springfield, Jackson & Pomeroy and on the 11thof October in 1879 the line was sold at a sheriff's sale in Springfield. Thebuyer was Oliver S. Kelly, who headed a group of ten, and on November 3 anewrailroad company, the Springfield Southern Railroad Co., emerged. Kellyproposed, but never built, an extension from Jackson to the town of Rockwood inLawrence County. He did, however, convert the line to standard gauge, utilizingmost of the narrow -gauge bridges and much of its 35-lb. rail, as well as mostof the narrow- gauge ties; every original eighth tie was replaced with a tie ofconventional standard gauge until finances permitted total replacement. On May23, 1881, the short-lived Spring Southern became the Ohio Southern RailroadCompany and a period of relative prosperity set in. The Ohio Southern wasleased by the Indiana, Bloomington & Western Railroad to be a connectinglink between that company, then building east from Indianapolis to Springfield,and the Chesapeake & Ohio building westward. Although the IB&W (laterto become the Peoria & Eastern) reached Springfield, the proposedconnection with the C&O at Huntington, West Virginia, never materialized,and IB&W control of the Ohio Southern ceased in April of 1892.

FromNovember 28, 1883, until May 31, 1884, the Ohio Southern operated a smallrailroad, the Cincinnati, Columbus & Hocking Valley -a line whose name wasnearly as long as its trackage. The CC&HV extended from a connection atJeffersonville with the Ohio Southern west to Claysville Junction on the LittleMiami Railroad's Cincinnati-Xenia main line. Organized on December 9,1875 asthe Waynesville, Port William & Jeffersonville Railroad Co., also a narrow-gauge line, its organizers were among those involved with the Springfield,Jackson & Pomeroy. The CC&HV completed 15 miles from Jeffersonville toPort William by October of 1877, and the following month was reorganized as theColumbus, Washington & Cincinnati Railroad Co. It is obvious from its namethat the proposed termini were to be Columbus and Cincinnati and, with thesecities in mind, the company built to the Little Miami connection at ClaysvilleJunction, now named Roxanna. But profitability eluded the ~W&C and the linewas abandoned and removed in 1887, although a portion of the roadbed waspurchased by the Ohio Southern in March of 1884 as part of its scheme toconstruct a Cincinnati-Columbus line at right angles to its own road. Builtfrom Sedalia through Jeffersonville and on to Kingman, funds were exhaustedbefore either end of the line was finished, and the entire railroad wasabandoned later in several stages between 1931 and 1941.

But this is getting ahead ofthe story...

In orderto obtainnew connections and a longer road haul on freight originating on -- its line,the Ohio Southern in December 1892 commenced building an extension in anortherly direction from Springfield to Lima. Completed on December 28, 1893,this was followed in the spring of 1894 by the extension of a spur line toWellston. Later that year, three coal mine spurs were authorized, including oneto Cornelia. But financial resources were too strained by the Lima extensionproject and the Ohio Southern was forced into receivership on May 9, 1895 at atime when construction of the Cincinnati-Columbus line ground to a halt shortof the Pennsylvania connection at Waynesville or a connection at Columbus withthe Cleveland, Akron & Columbus. A group of bondholders purchased theproperty on October 15, 1898 at a foreclosure sale, and the Ohio Southern washistory.