was first demonstrated during the Flood of 1884, when the rising Ohio River cut off all other railroads from downtown Cincinnati. But the load was too much for the narrow gauge TC&StL, and several companies switched to Miami and Erie Canal boats to make the connections until the waters subsided. Similar Cincinnati floods happened in 1883, 1897, 1898, 1907, and 1937, but in 1913 the Great Dayton Flood inundated that city, then lying at the north end of the independent DL&C. That company had just completed its line into downtown Dayton, when, less than a year later, the Loramie Reservoir broke through its levees and sent a swell of water through down the Great Miami River and into the city. As with the Cincinnati floods, only the CL&N and DL&C were unaffected, and relief supplies were sent north from Cincinnati via Lebanon to the National Cash Register plant. The line began on the east side of downtown Cincinnati, at the corner of Eggleston Avenue and Court Street. The site of the brick freight depot, closed in 1969 and demolished in 1975, is now owned by Greyhound Lines, which uses it as an intercity bus terminal. A track built in 1887 crossed Court Street, connecting with the Little Miami Railroad's Eggleston Avenue Connection for freight transfer. The line began by climbing the Deer Creek Valley, the only feasible rail entrance to downtown Cincinnati that did not follow a river valley. When the railroad was built in the late 1870s, the valley was used by the city as a dump. An 1852 city ordinance provided for raising the ground level, beginning with the raising of Court Street by as much as . To follow the eventual surface level and avoid the steep hillsides, the railroad was built on trestles for much of its ascent, with a maximum grade of 3.5%. After leaving the depot, the line traversed an S-shaped trestle to the east side of the valley, before crossing Elsinore Place and Eden Park Drive at grade, with a second trestle between these streets. (The former was replaced in January 1889 with a straighter single-track trestle.) A bridge took the line over Florence Avenue, and it then passed through the neighborhood of Mount Auburn before passing under the summit through the cut-and-cover Oak Street Tunnel north of McMillan Street. The line started its gradual descent as it left the tunnel, generally following