Knox and Kane Railroad

Knox and Kane Railroad

Knox & Kane 58, in July 1990, before being repainted
Reporting mark	KKRR
Locale	Northwestern Pennsylvania
Dates of operation	1982–2008
Track gauge	4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Headquarters	Marienville, Pennsylvania

The Knox and Kane Railroad (K&K) was a short-line railroad in Pennsylvania that operated between Knox, in Clarion County, to Kane and then on to Mount Jewett, in McKean County.

The track and right of way was bought from the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1982 when the B&O discontinued operations on the old Northern Subdivision between Foxburg and Kane. This line was a part of the old Pittsburgh and Western Railroad, originally a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow-gauge line created in the latter third of the 19th century from a merging of various earlier narrow-gauge lines.

When the segment of the B&O from Foxburg to Knox was taken out of service, shipping raw materials, mostly glassmaking sand, to Knox Glass became difficult. To ease this situation, a connection with the Conrail (originally the New York Central Railroad) line through Shippenville was put in place. The B&O and NYC crossed each other not too far west of Shippenville for many years, but there had never been provision for interchange between the two roads. Operations in to Knox, which had been the original southern terminus of the K&K, were discontinued around the time the only real customer in Knox, the Knox glass bottle company, ceased operations. This ended the use of the Shippenville interchange.