An Artilleryman’s Diary–Jenkin Lloyd Jones

En route, Sunday, Nov. 13. Griff and I made our bed in the open air, and slept as of old while on the march, warm and cozy though our blankets in the morning were stiff with frost. Had to wait till noon for the wreckers to get the track in repair, when we started on our way rejoicing, as it was very cold. Passed through Bridgeport without stopping. Waited at Stevenson thirty minutes, when we took the Nashville Railroad, 112 miles long. This route being new to me, consequently more interesting. The first thirty miles was through a low swampy country with but few traces of civilization. A few station houses, lightly garrisoned, until we neared the Cumberland Range, which we had to cross. Here on a sidetrack we found small coal-burning engines ready to help us over, small driving wheels but capable of great power. Coupled on behind us with vigorous puffs and dense clouds of coal smoke. It propelled us up a grade of two hundred feet to a mile, through cuts in the solid rock fifty feet high, now running along a narrow shelf hewed in the side of an ancient slope with a deep canon below us and the eternal rocks above us. Finally we entered the tunnel, three-fourths of a mile long, drilled in solid rock. Three ventilating shafts run down from above. We could see nothing, the hot smoky air tending to warm our chilled systems. Daylight found us on the west side of the mountain, having passed over one of the greatest pieces of internal improvement I have ever seen, North or South. Darkness was fast approaching, and we once more crawled into our den to seek rest and warmth in broken slumbers, regretting that it was not yet daylight so I could see the remainder of the line which was wrenched from traitors’ hands by the gallant Rosecrans.