The Kansas City, Clinton & Springfield was a subsiderary of the Kansas City, Ft. Scott & Memphis (the "Memphis).
It ran from Olathe, Kansas, through Clinton, Missouri, to Ash Grove, Missouri.
It reached it's other namesake cities upon trackage rights over it's parent road.
The line basically paralelled the Frisco Kansas City-Clinton-Springfield line known as The High Line.
The lines split at Belton with the KCCS continuing west through Stanley, Kansas to Olathe.
The line also split on the southern end of the line at Tracy Junction to serve the west end of Polk County, MO.
Service on the road was of a local nature, but trains ran between the major terminals.
Passenger service was slow, as the train stopped at every station. This caused the road to become the butt of jokes around the countryside.
At least one person did have something good to say about the line. Harry Truman rode it around 1915 and mentioned in a letter to his sweetheart, Bess that the farmland the line traveled through was good and beautiful.
Nicknames of a derogatory nature were the ones that stuck, however. The operator of a mill once asked his station agent
to send hime good boxcars, not the "leaky roofs". This stuck as a nickname for the hapless road.
In 1901, the Memphis merged with the Frisco, however this didn't eliminate the KCCS. For some reason, most likely financial, the Frisco kept the KCCS seperate in name but took over operation of the road. The Frisco took steps over the years to consolidate the KCCS with it's parallell line. In 1926 a connection between Brownington and Deepwater was built so parts of both roads could operate over the other. In 1930, The portion between Deepwater and Clinton was abandoned due to flood damage. Operations continued over the Frisco. 1934 sounded the death march for the KCCS. The railroads were going bankrupt one after another. Costs had to be cut. The KCCS was deemed expendible as it was a paralell line on which maintenence had been defered. Only local traffic could be found on the line. This wasn't enough to keep the line afloat. Abandonment procedings occured, with heavy local protest along the line. This came to no avail, and the line was abandoned, except for very short stretches in December of 1934.