At the outset of the 20th century, second only to the mines themselves, railroads drove development in the Dunloup Creek watershed. In the fiercely competitive coal business, access to the railroad determined the success or failure of mining operations and of the company towns that sprang up along the floodplain of Dunloup Creek and across the New River coalfields. Recognizing this, Thomas McKell worked to bring rail connections into the mine lands, first linking his property to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway mainline by building a bridge over the New River in 1889. He later worked with the Chesapeake & Ohio to build the Loop Creek branch along Dunloup Creek through his coal-rich lands, in return for promising to build a coke plant capable of processing 1,000 tons of coal daily. Begun in 1892 and completed at MacDonald in 1894, the branch connected dozens of communities along the dense Sewell coal seam. In the 1900s, Thomas McKell and later his son William also established the Kanawha, Glen Jean & Eastern, connecting their mines to the competing Virginian Railway.