| Significant Events in the Life of the Confederate Railroads | |
| 4/25/1861 | First railroad convention sets rates for Government travel |
| 7/18/1861 | W. S. Ashe appointed first Confederate coordinator of rail transportation |
| 1861-1862 | Capture of Baltimore & Ohio RR and US Army rolling stock and its movement south |
| 1861-1865 | The continuous blockade of the South, requiring the large quantity of goods that had pre-war gone by ship and boat to go by rail |
| 4/6 & 11/1862 | Union victory at Shiloh and capture of Huntsville, Al., severing the Memphis & Charleston RR, the only all-rail connection from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic seaboard |
| 4/25/1862 | Union capture of New Orleans, breaking the mostly rail route from the populous part of Texas to the eastern Confederacy |
| 6/20/1862 | Establishment of the Confederate Locomotive Shops in Raleigh, N. C. to keep the government-owned rolling stock operating |
| 12/3/1862 | W. M. Wadley appointed second Confederate coordinator of rail transportation |
| 1862-1864 | The conversion from growing cotton to growing food and the great increase in railroad effort required to move the food to where it was needed |
| 2/2/1863 | The disestablishment of the Confederate Locomotive Shops |
| 5/14/1863 | Union capture of Jackson, Miss., isolating hundreds of pieces of rolling stock in northern Mississippi for the rest of the war. |
| 5?/?/1863 | The establishment of the Iron Commission to formalize the removal of rails from some railroads in order to keep other roads running |
| 6/4/1863 | F. W. Sims appointed third Confederate coordinator of rail transportation |
| 9/2/1863 | Union capture of Knoxville, breaking the most direct link between Atlanta and Richmond |
| late 1863 | The receipt of railroad supplies through the blockade, primarily as a result of the John M. Robinson trip to England |
| 1/24/64 | East Tennessee & Virginia RR take over by government and Virginia & Tennessee RR Superintendent, Robert L. Owen appointed Military Superintendent |
| 5/19/1864 | Completion of the Piedmont RR (Greensboro, N. C. to Danville, Va.) |
| 11/15 - 12/13/1864 | Sherman's raid through southeastern Georgia, causing so much railroad destruction that his route was not crossed by rail again until after the war |
| 12/21/1864 | Sherman's capture of Savannah, causing, in conjunction with the above event, the isolation of Florida and southern Georgia from the northeastern Confederacy |
| 1865 | Vast destruction of railroads in South Carolina, by Sherman, and in Alabama, by Wilson. |