The Wheeling and Youngstown Railroad Company (W&Y) was founded in 1893 by the M.A. Hanna Company to haul iron ore and other products from the port at Euclid, Ohio on the Great Lakes to the Great Lakes Steel Company plants in Youngstown, OH and Wheeling, West Virginia. In 1905, the W&Y purchased the Monongahela & Ohio River Connecting Rwy. (M&OR), providing a critical supply of metallurgical coal from Northern WV and Southwestern Pennsylvania to coking plants and steel mills along the W&Y. The railroad was renamed the Monongahela, Youngstown & Erie (MY&E) at this time. In 1927, the railroad merged with the Kanawha & Wheeling Terminal (K&WT), providing an additional vital route for coal traffic in West Virginia for points north on the MY&E. In 1929, the parent companies of the railroad consolidated to form the National Standard Steel Corporation. This consolidation resulted in the reorganization of the railroad properties held by NSSC in 1930. At this time, the railroad was finally named the Kanawha, Youngstown & Northern (KY&N).
During World War II, under the direction of the United States Railroad Administration (USRA), the KY&N entered into a trackage rights agreement with both the New York Central (NYC) and the Pennsylvania (PRR) railroads. NYC trains operated with KY&N crews between Charleston, WV and Youngstown, OH, while the PRR trains ran with KY&N crews only as far north as Weirton, WV to the PRR Panhandle Division. These agreements continued through the Penn Central and early Conrail eras.
In 1974, the KY&N owned 1,502.6 miles of primary routes and a total of 3,756.5 miles of track.
