Yes. it is Knoxville. Up thorough the 50's there was a lot of Midwest to Florida traffic through there on the L&N on the Flamingo and Southland. There was a gathering of trains to/from Detroit, Cleveland, etc. at Cincinatti for these trains, which went south of Atlanta on CofG or ACL or some combination thereof.
The prime issue with any Midwest to Florida service is speed. The middle part of any of these routes is either cross-grain or trying to go around the Appalachians. Recall in the major railroad building era of the last half of the nineteenth century most of the lines south of the Ohio River were going through areas that were not densely populated and relatively poor, as well as hilly.
