Overview | |
---|---|
Reporting mark | AGS |
Locale | Chattanooga, TN-Meridian, MS (New Orleans, LA from 1969) |
Dates of operation | 1877–present |
Successor | Southern Railway |
Technical | |
Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
Previous gauge | |
Length | 1,084 miles (1,745 km) |
The Alabama Great Southern Railroad( reporting mark AGS) is a railroad in the U.S. states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It is an operating subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation (NS), [2] running southwest from Chattanooga (where it connects with the similarly owned Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway) to New Orleans through Birmingham and Meridian. The AGS also owns about a 30% interest in the Canadian Pacific Kansas City-controlled Meridian-Shreveport Meridian Speedway. [3]
In 1970 AGS reported 3854 million net ton-miles (5627 million net tonne-kilometers) of revenue freight and 105 million passenger miles (169 million passenger kilometers); at the end of that year it operated 528 miles (850 km) of road and 1,084 miles (1,745 km) of track. (Those totals do not include Class II subsidiary Louisiana Southern.)
The AGS's oldest predecessor was the Wills Valley Railroad, chartered by the Alabama Legislature in February 1852 to extend from a point on the Alabama and Tennessee River Railroad northeast to the Georgia state line. [4] In January and February 1854, respectively, the Georgia and Tennessee legislatures authorized the company to continue its road to a point on the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad. [5] [6] The North East and South West Alabama Railroad was chartered in Alabama in December 1853 and Mississippi in February 1854, to extend from Meridian through Livingston, Eutaw, Tuscaloosa, and Elyton (Birmingham) in the direction of Knoxville, Tennessee. [7] [8] [9] Both companies received land grants through a June 1856 federal law, [10] assigned by Alabama in January 1858 to the North East and South West from Mississippi to near Gadsden and to the Wills Valley from near Gadsden to Georgia. [11]
The two companies began construction from their termini outside Alabama. The Wills Valley opened the line from the Nashville and Chattanooga at Wauhatchie, Tennessee to Trenton, Georgia by December 1860, operating to Chattanooga via trackage rights over the Nashville and Chattanooga. [12] The North East and South West began its line at Meridian, reaching a connection with the Alabama and Mississippi Rivers Railroad (later the Selma and Meridian Railroad) at York, Alabama by 1860, and was leased to the latter company. [13] A group of Boston capitalists headed by John C. Stanton gained control of the companies after the Civil War, and the legislature passed a law in November 1868 to merge the two as the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad. (Georgia, Tennessee, and Mississippi renamed their portions in March 1869, February 1870, and May 1871, respectively.) The entire line was completed in May 1871, creating a diagonal link across Alabama. [14] However, due to nonpayment of interest on state bonds, the state of Alabama seized the property in mid-1871, and it was operated by other parties (including the president of the connecting New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad) until November 1877, when it was reorganized as the Alabama Great Southern Railroad by Emile Erlanger and Company. [8] [9]
Erlanger set up an English corporation, Alabama Great Southern Railway Company, Limited, to own the stock of the AGS. In 1881, this company gained control of the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway, which continued north from Chattanooga to Cincinnati. A second English corporation, Alabama, New Orleans, Texas and Pacific Junction Railways Company, Limited, was created in 1881 to increase the funds available to purchase associated lines. It bought the Alabama Great Southern Railway Company, New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad, Vicksburg and Meridian Railway, and Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific Railroad, but in 1890 control of the AGS was sold to the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway and Richmond and Danville Railroad, which both became part of the Southern Railway later that decade. [9] [15] In April 1892, the AGS acquired the Gadsden and Attalla Railroad, a branch from Attalla to Gadsden, but in 1905 the AGS sold it to the Southern, retaining trackage rights. The AGS bought a half interest in the Woodstock and Blocton Railway from the Louisville and Nashville Railroad in July 1909, giving it access to West Blocton. [13]
The AGS incorporated the Wauhatchie Extension Railway in April 1914 to continue the line from Wauhatchie to a junction with the Southern subsidiary Memphis-Chattanooga Railway west of Lookout Mountain. The property became part of the AGS in February 1917 and was completed later that year, giving the AGS a new route into Chattanooga, via the extension, trackage rights over the Memphis-Chattanooga, and a lease of the Belt Railway of Chattanooga. [8]
By the summer of 1954, the AGS retired all of their steam locomotives. In January 1969, at the same time as the Southern gained total control over the AGS, it merged the New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad into the AGS. [16] [17] [18] The AGS absorbed the Chattanooga Terminal Railway, Louisiana Southern Railway, and New Orleans Terminal Company in August 1993. [19] [20]
Southern Railway trains ran over the territory of the AGS. The Queen and Crescent ran on its territory until its termination in 1949. [21] The Birmingham Special ran on the AGS' Chattanooga to Birmingham segment until its discontinuance in 1970. The Pelican also ran on its entire length, lasting to 1970. The Southerner ran on its territory southwest of Birmingham until its termination in 1970. [22] Today, Amtrak's Crescent operates on its territory southwest of Birmingham.
Interstate 59 (I-59) is an Interstate Highway located in the southeastern United States. It is a north–south route that spans 445.23 miles (716.53 km) from a junction with I-10 and I-12 at Slidell, Louisiana, to a junction with I-24 near Wildwood, Georgia.
Southern Airways was a local service carrier, a scheduled airline certificated by the federal Civil Aeronautics Board, in the United States, from its founding by Frank Hulse in 1949 until 1979, when it merged with North Central Airlines to become Republic Airlines. Southern's corporate headquarters were in Birmingham, with operations headquartered at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, near Atlanta.
U.S. Route 11 or U.S. Highway 11 (US 11) is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway extending 1,645 miles (2,647 km) across the eastern U.S. The southern terminus of the route is at US 90 in Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge in eastern New Orleans, Louisiana. The northern terminus is at the Rouses Point–Lacolle 223 Border Crossing in Rouses Point, New York. The route continues across the border into Canada as Route 223. US 11, created in 1926, maintains most of its original route. The route north of Knoxville, Tennessee, follows a route similar to Interstate 81 (I-81). While it is signed as a north–south route, it physically travels in a northeast–southwest direction.
The Crescent is a daily long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak between New York City and New Orleans. The 1,377-mile (2,216 km) route connects the Northeast to the Gulf Coast via the Appalachian Piedmont, with major stops in Charlotte, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and Birmingham, Alabama.
The Southern Railway was a class 1 railroad based in the Southern United States between 1894 and 1982, when it merged with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) to form the Norfolk Southern Railway. The railroad was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894.
The Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway was a railway company that operated in the U.S. states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. It began as the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, chartered in Nashville on December 11, 1845, built to 5 ft gauge and was the first railway to operate in the state of Tennessee. By the turn of the twentieth century, the NC&StL grew into one of the most important railway systems in the southern United States.
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad, commonly called the L&N, was a Class I railroad that operated freight and passenger services in the southeast United States.
The Alabama & Gulf Coast Railway is a Class II railroad owned by Genesee & Wyoming. It operates 339 miles (546 km) of track from the Pensacola, Florida export terminals, west of downtown, north to Columbus, Mississippi, with trackage rights along BNSF Railway to Amory, Mississippi. A branch uses trackage rights along Norfolk Southern from Kimbrough, Alabama west and south to Mobile, Alabama, with separate trackage at the end of the line in Mobile.
The Alabama and Tennessee River Railway is a shortline railway operating over trackage formerly operated by CSX Transportation. The line's western terminus is a junction with the CSX main line in Birmingham, Alabama, near CSX's Boyles Yard. The eastern terminus is Guntersville, Alabama, near the Tennessee River. The parent company of the ATN is OmniTRAX, a major operator of American and Canadian short lines.
The Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia Railroad was created through a reorganization of the Chattanooga Southern Railway in 1911. A few years later, in 1922, the line's name was changed to the Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia Railway and was also known as the TAG Route. The TAG ran from Chattanooga, Tennessee, through northwest Georgia, and into Gadsden, Alabama. The trackage began at Milepost 1 in Alton Park (Chattanooga) and continued southwest to the southern terminus in Gadsden, some 91.7 miles (147.6 km) distant. In 1952, the railroad retired its last steam locomotive.
The Queen and Crescent Route was a cooperative railroad route in the Southeastern U.S., connecting Cincinnati with New Orleans and Shreveport. Inaugurated in the 1880s, the name was retained by Southern Railway when they consolidated ownership of the entire route in 1926, and given to their named passenger train for the route through 1949.
The New Orleans and Northeastern Railroad was a Class I railroad in Louisiana and Mississippi in the United States. The railroad operated 196 miles (315 km) of road from its completion in 1883 until it was absorbed by the Alabama Great Southern Railroad subsidiary of the Southern Railway in 1969.
The Southwestern Limited was a night train, as #205 of the Illinois Central Railroad in the Southeastern United States. Running on the IC subsidiary Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad Vicksburg Division, from Meridian, Mississippi's Union Station to Shreveport, Louisiana's own Union Station, it was one of the few trains spanning the Mississippi River south of St. Louis, Missouri and north of New Orleans, Louisiana.
Alabama City is a former city and now a neighborhood within the city of Gadsden in Etowah County, Alabama, United States. It was equidistant between Gadsden and Attalla, Alabama, approximately 2 1/2 miles west of downtown Gadsden.