The story of the Atlantic Coast Line's wonderful postwar passenger trains is told in a readable narrative supported by scores of company publicity photos that depict the trains inside and out. This book not only covers the great New York-to-Florida streamliners, but also the locals and workaday passenger trains that crisscrossed the ACL system. Also featured are car and locomotive rosters, diagrams and drawings, and other material useful to modelers in constructing and painting ACL passenger cars.
Before the coming of Amtrak in 1971, the Seaboard Air Line Railroad was long recognized as having some of the best long-distance passenger trains in the country. Billing itself as “the Route of Courteous Service” Seaboard took great pride in running trains that the public would like the first time and would want to ride again and again. This book focuses on the last decades of Seaboard’s existence. The 1930s through the late 1950s in particular witnessed many dramatic changes – the replacement of steam with diesels, the ascendancy of lightweight trains, and the last hurrah of the once-familiar local passenger train. This is a chronological account, although special treatment has been given to Seaboard’s lightweight trains, other named trains and locals.
The complete history of this fascinating eastern railway features freight and passenger train operations and cars, and steam and diesel locomotives. Concentrating on the period of most interest to railway fans, 1945 through 1970, the text is accompanied by wonderful imagery from numerous railway photographers and company archives, including a special 16-page color section.
This 176-page book tells the complete story of the merger and operation of two of the Southern's great railroads: Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line, and their highly successful operation as Seaboard Coast Line. It carries the story down to the additional consolidation of Louisville & Nashville and Clinchfield Railroads into the system to form Seaboard System, just before its merger with Chessie System to become today's CSX Transportation. Passenger and freight operations and cars are covered in detail as well as all other aspects of the line's operation.
It is safe to say that without railroads, Florida wouldn't be what it is today. Railroads connected the state's important cities and towns, conquered the peninsula's vast and seemingly impenetrable interior, ushered in untold numbers of settlers and tourists, and conveyed to market--faster than any previous means of transportation--the myriad products of Florida's mines, forests, factories, farms, and groves. Gregg Turner traces the long, slow development of Florida railroads, from the first tentative lines in the 1830s, through the boom of the 1880s, to the maturity of the railroad system in the 1920s. At the end of that decade nearly 6,000 miles of labyrinthine track covered the state. Turner also examines the decline of the industry, as the automobile rose to prominence in American culture and lines were abandoned or sold for hiking trails and green spaces. Meticulously researched and richly illustrated--including many never-before-published images--A Journey into Florida Railroad History is a comprehensive, authoritative history of the subject. Written by one of the nation's foremost authorities on Florida railroads, it explores all the key players and companies, and every significant period of development. This engaging and lively story will be savored and enjoyed by generations to come.
