Youngstown and Southeastern Railroad
| Reporting mark | YSRR |
|---|---|
| Locale | Ohio and Pennsylvania |
| Dates of operation | 2006– |
| Track gauge | 4 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
| Headquarters | Connersville, Indiana |
The Youngstown and Southeastern Railroad (reporting mark YSRR) is a short-line railroad subsidiary of the Indiana Boxcar Corporation that operates freight trains between Youngstown, Ohio and Darlington, Pennsylvania, United States. The line is owned by the Columbiana County Port Authority, leased to the Eastern States Railroad, which is owned by the line's primary shipper, and contracted out to the YSRR. Freight is interchanged with CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway at the Youngstown end.
The trackage was originally owned by the Youngstown and Southern Railway (reporting mark YS), which operated from 1904 to 1993, including a period as an electric interurban passenger railway between 1907 and 1948, being the last such line in Ohio. It was later jointly owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad and Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. After a local company bought the line in November 1996 and illegally closed it and blocked repairs, the line was out of service for almost five years until the Central Columbiana and Pennsylvania Railway (reporting mark CQPA) began operations in May 2001. Service under the YSRR name started in 2006, after the second of two less-than-two-year periods of operation by the Ohio Central Railroad System component Ohio and Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark OHPA) (the first was in 1995 and 1996).
The YSRR begins in southern Youngstown, where it interchanges with CSX Transportation and the Norfolk Southern Railway adjacent to the Mahoning River. It heads northwest up the river bank and then curves southwest to climb a ravine to the highlands of Boardman Township. The original interurban line followed Front Street and South Avenue out of downtown and over the Mahoning River, then a private right-of-way between Wabash and Franklin Avenues, joining the present line just east of South Avenue. Beyond Boardman, the line continues through the highlands, crossing the Norfolk Southern Railway's Fort Wayne Line at Columbiana. As it approaches Signal, where it turns east, and the Pittsburgh, Lisbon and Western Railroad once continued west, it drops into the valley of the Little Bull Creek, which empties into Bull Creek before it reaches Negley. From that community, the Smiths Ferry Branch formerly extended south alongside the North Fork and main course of Little Beaver Creek, reaching the Ohio River at Smiths Ferry. The main line continues east from Negley, up the North Fork Little Beaver Creek valley into Pennsylvania, where it ends at Darlington. It formerly continued a short distance farther to the Fort Wayne Line at New Galilee.
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