The Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway played a major role in memorializing Civil War battlefields by buying land and installing signs along its tracks to identify battle locations, erecting monuments such as the Artillery Monument, encouraging veteran reunions, and running a train to Stones River for formal celebrations. Under railway president John W. Thomas, the company also scheduled tours to southern battlefields. At stops such as Cemetery, railway platforms became gateways to hallowed ground, where passengers stepped off trains, used company booklets explaining battles along the route, and remembered the soldiers and battles between the North and South.