Piedmont and Northern Railway Company

William States Lee, vice-president of Southern Power and Utilities Company (now Duke Power Company), proposed the creation of the Piedmont and Northern Railway Company in 1909. Southern Power's president, James B. Duke, approved of Lee's proposal and stock was first issued in 1911. Envisioned as an electric interurban linking the major cities of the Piedmont Carolinas, construction began in Charlotte in 1911 under the direction of Lee's brother, Arthur Carl Lee. A connection of the two routes was never realized when Southern Railway Company secured an ICC ruling against an expansion of the P & N after World War I. In 1969, the railway merged with the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (now CSX Transportation).