BRANCHLINE
HO KIT# 8036 GEORGIA 40-FT AAR BOXCAR GA 19925 (1945) RED with WHITE LETTERING
YARDMASTER SERIES
The 1937 design AAR boxcar
carried features that would become standard on boxcars for years to come,
including dreadnaught ends, straight panel roofs and 40' 6" inside
lengths. They had 10' 0" interior heights, and approximately 3700 cubic
foot capacity. Built in the thousands for railroads nationwide they enjoyed a
long career. Many of these cars could still be found in service well into the
1960s.
The Georgia Railroad and Banking
Company (reporting mark GA) also seen as "GARR", was a historic
railroad and banking company that operated in the U.S. state of Georgia. In
1967 it reported 833 million revenue-ton-miles of freight and 3 million passenger-miles;
at the end of the year it operated 331 miles (533 km) of road and 510 miles
(820 km) of track.
History
The company was chartered in
1833 in Augusta, Georgia. In 1835, the charter was amended to include banking.
Originally the line was chartered to build a railroad from Augusta to Athens,
with a branch to Madison. It was converted to 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) in 1886.
The 5 ft (1,524 mm) gauge
railroad opened in 1845 with J. Edgar Thomson as its Chief Engineer and Richard
Peters as its first Superintendent.
The Western and Atlantic
Railroad was chartered to build a line from 7 miles (11 km) south of the
Chattahoochee River, at a point named Terminus (present-day Atlanta), to
Chattanooga, Tennessee (formerly Ross Landing).
The South Carolina Railroad was
building a line from Charleston to North Augusta, South Carolina (formerly
Hamburg).
The Memphis and Charleston
Railroad was being built from Memphis to Chattanooga.
The Nashville and Chattanooga
Railroad and the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) were both
constructing rival lines between Louisville, Kentucky, and Nashville,
Tennessee.
The Georgia Railroad decided to
extend the Madison branch to Terminus (Atlanta) and thereby compete with the
Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia (later the Central of Georgia
Railroad), which together with the Macon & Western Railroad, was competing
for traffic through Charleston's rival port of Savannah, Georgia. By 1850, this
railroad had built 213 miles (343 km) of track and was up to 232 miles (373 km)
by 1860. At the time, goods from the Mississippi and Ohio valleys had to go by
riverboat to New Orleans and then via coastal steamships around the Florida
Keys, to get to the big population centers in the Northeast. Shipping
cross-country by rail to the ports of Charleston and Savannah made perfect
economic sense.
Banking
The banking side of the business
was quickly more successful than the railroad side. The Georgia Railroad &
Banking Company was perhaps the strongest bank in Georgia for many years. The
bankers used some of their wealth to buy controlling interests in the Atlanta
& West Point Railroad (A&WP) and the Western Railway of Alabama (WofA),
which provided a continuous line from Atlanta to Montgomery, Alabama, although
the WofA was standard gauge, while all the other lines in the South were broad
gauge.
Civil War
Locomotives and rolling stock of
the Georgia Railroad (Ga. R. R.) and the Atlanta & West Point Railroad (A.
& WPT. R. R.) in the ruined roundhouse of Atlanta, Georgia shortly after the
end of the Civil War
During the American Civil War,
the Confederate States of America maintained a gunpowder factory in Augusta.
Carloads of gunpowder would be transported on the Georgia Railroad to various
battlefields in the "Western Campaign."
Although the Civil War saw heavy
damage to railroads such as the Georgia Railroad, management used their
considerable resources to restore operation as quickly as possible. The Georgia
Railroad even resorted to temporarily abandoning the Athens branch to secure
enough rail to reopen its main line. After their defeat, returning Confederate
soldiers were given free rides home, to the extent that the company's limited
rail network would allow.
They also honored all
Confederate scrip issued by their bank. No depositor lost their savings even if
Confederate money had no value. It helped that the Georgia Railroad and Banking
Company had the financial strength to honor those promises. At that time, most
Southern banks were repudiating any obligations related to Confederate
currency. This helped to solidify the bank's reputation as one of the premier
banks in the southeastern United States, well into the 20th century.
Post-war years
The Georgia Railroad Freight
Depot, designed by architect Max Corput, was completed in 1869 and is the
oldest building in Downtown Atlanta. The company was later re-chartered as the
Georgia Railroad Bank, then a subsidiary of the First Railroad and Banking
Company, which eventually opened banks in Atlanta under the name of First
Georgia Bank. The banking operations were merged with First Union in 1986 and
First Union subsequently merged with Wachovia Corporation (now Wells Fargo).
The Georgia Railroad Bank entered
the insurance business using subsidiaries such as First of Georgia, however
these were subsequently sold, at considerable profit to the company.
In 1881, Colonel William M.
Wadley, Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia president, leased the
railroad properties of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company, including the
A&WP and WofA. Wadley assigned half of the lease to his company and half to
the L&N. Following the Panic of 1896, the Central went into receivership
and its portion of the lease lapsed, whereupon it was eventually reassigned to
the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL). In 1902, the ACL acquired controlling
interest in the L&N; thus the Georgia, A&WP, and WofA became
non-operating subsidiaries of the Atlantic Coast Line. In 1909, white firemen
of the Georgia Railroad, organized under the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen
and Enginemen, went on a mass strike.
With the building of the
Savannah and Atlanta Railroad, which connected with the Georgia Railroad at
Warrenton, the Georgia Railroad now competed with the Central of Georgia
Railroad for traffic to and from Savannah. Soon the ACL came to dominate the
Augusta interchange traffic, through its Charleston and Western Carolina
Railway subsidiary and via the ACL's spur from its main line at Florence, South
Carolina, in order that the Georgia Railroad could compete with the Seaboard
Air Line Railroad and Southern Railway for traffic from Atlanta up the Eastern
seaboard.
The Georgia Railroad's Augusta
Local passenger train, waiting to depart from Atlanta Union Station in 1963
A 1925 timetable showed four
daily roundtrips between Atlanta and Augusta. A trip on the Night Express of
that era was described by W.F Beckum.
By the opening of the 1960s,
however, passenger service had been reduced to an overnight through-train from
Atlanta to Augusta, continuing as an Atlantic Coast Line Railroad train to
Wilmington, North Carolina, and a day train from Atlanta, making connections at
Augusta with an ACL train bound for Florence, South Carolina.
A
unique feature of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company charter was that the
state legislature gave the corporation large tax breaks, which were legally
challenged on several occasions. The charter also called for
daily-except-Sunday passenger service. The lawyers advised management to
maintain passenger service on all lines, so as to not violate the charter. The
Georgia was perhaps the last railroad to operate both freight and inter-city
passenger trains in the "Lower 48" states, into the Amtrak era.