The Atlanta, Birmingham and Coast Railroad was organized in 1926 to replace the bankrupt

Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic Railway The Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic Railway was formed in 1914 as a reorganization of the Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic Railroad, which had been created in 1905 to purchase the Atlantic and Birmingham Railway and extend its track into Birmin ...

. The AB&C was controlled by the

Atlantic Coast Line Railroad The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad was a United States Class I railroad formed in 1900, though predecessor railroads had used the ACL brand since 1871. In 1967, it merged with long-time rival Seaboard Air Line Railroad to form the Seaboard Coast ...

, which owned a majority of the stock. In 1944 it reported 763 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 33 million passenger-miles; at the end of that year it operated 639 miles of road and 836 miles of track (the main trackage plus all sidings, spurs, terminal tracks, and shared tracks).

Passenger services

The AB&C operated daily freight and passenger trains between its northern endpoints, Atlanta and Birmingham, and its southern ones, Brunswick, Waycross, and Thomasville. Passenger trains from Atlanta used

Terminal Station A train station, railroad station, or railway station is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight, or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track, and a station building providing such ...

until November 1933, when the AB&C moved to Atlanta Union Station. Other southbound trains left Birmingham from the AB&C's own Eleventh Street station there. The two northern branches joined at

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

to form a single main line to the port city of Brunswick, on the Atlantic coast. A branch from the main line at

Fitzgerald Fitzgerald may refer to: People * Fitzgerald (surname), a surname * Fitzgerald Hinds, Trinidadian politician * Fitzgerald Toussaint (born 1990), former American football running back Place Australia * Fitzgerald River National Park, a nati ...

ran 80 miles southwesterly to Thomasville, while another branch carried trains to Waycross for connection with the Atlantic Coast Line to the Florida railroad hub of Jacksonville, 75 miles away. From January 1936, the AB&C was a link in the route of the Chicago-Miami ''Dixieland''. which ran in the winter season only, carrying coaches and Pullmans between Atlanta and Waycross. And beginning in January 1940, the AB&C also carried the ''

Dixie Flagler The ''Dixie Flagler'' was a streamlined passenger train operated by the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC) between Chicago, Illinois and Miami, Florida. It began in 1939 as the ''Henry M. Flagler'', a regional service between Miami and Jacksonville, ...

'', a new, streamlined all-coach train that ran every third day, one of a trio of streamliners that provided daily service between Chicago and Miami via multiple railroads over three different routes. The route via the AB&C was the shortest of all three, a total of 1455 miles, covered in 29 1/2 hours.

Acquisition

In 1946 the AB&C was merged into the ACL, becoming the latter company's Western Division.

References

Bibliography

* Goolsby, Larry. ''Atlantic, Birmingham & Coast''. ACL&SAL Historical Society. 2000. *

External links

Atlanta, Birmingham and Coast Railroad
- report by Georgia Department of Transportation, 2018; 54 pp.

- includes system map Defunct Georgia (U.S. state) railroads Former Class I railroads in the United States Predecessors of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Railway companies established in 1926 Railway companies disestablished in 1946 Defunct Alabama railroads American companies established in 1926 1946 mergers and acquisitions 1926 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state) 1946 disestablishments in Georgia (U.S. state) American companies disestablished in 1946 {{US-ClassI-rail-transport-stub