I was in Columbus, Ms overnight before heading to Florida.
On the way out of town, we passed the Severstal Steel mini mill. Quite a bit of cars in the yard, along with a couple of locomotives. The small town of Artesa seemed to be a junction of a couple of rail lines. There was a decent sized yard and a number of cars.
The line from Artesa to Severstal seemed to be in excellent condition with welded rail, if I recall correctly. Is this the Greenville and Columbus Railroad? Travelling south to Meridian on US45, there was a line that we crossed several times. Didnt see any trains, but the track seemed to be in excellent condition.
Can anyone yield any info on the operations in and around Columbus (and down to Meridian)? What lines service this area.
I did no research in advance of this trip, thus have no idea of the railroads in the area.
My mother in law lives just across the border in AL. next time I am in the area I will have to do some railfaning. Thanks for the heads up about the area.
I didnt bring an old Official Guide or anything with me, but from limited research, it appears the old Frisco mainline to Birmingham runs thru town (now BNSF).
A few other quick observations on the trip:
The BNSF intermodal yard in Memphis is pretty big and modern. There were 4 or 5 of the huge overhead crane units. Nice view from the interstate. Memphis, which I know little about, is obviously a huge logistics and distribution center. Passed over the CN yard, but at 55mph, I really couldnt look too closely. How busy is their yard? A few years ago the yard was rebuilt into a hump yard and renamed after Hunter Harrison (IIRC).
There was a shortline in Eastern Mississippi which we kept passing over on US 45. What is impressive is the condition of the line. Didnt appear to be a shortline, but a secondary main of a class 1. Perhaps it is. Good ballast, no weeds, straight rail.
Mobile, Al has a CN yard, we passed over it entering town. Anyone know anything about CN in Mobile? The old GM&O building looks great. Was that their station? Looked more like a headquarters building, or at least a regional building. Nicely preserved. Again, at 55mph, I had about 1 seconds of observing.
What about CSX across the Florida panhandle? We are in Ft Walton Beach and perhaps between walks on the beach and to the local Waffle House I might run out to see a little action. On the other hand…probably not.
About 20 years ago, I worked a few weeks in the Columbus, MS area, and remember discovering the Columbus & Greenville Railway (CAGY). I don’t have much information about it, but it seemed to be an interesting operation. Wikipedia says they were bought by Genessee & Wyoming in 2008. What I remember most was what I would say was a late 19th century passenger train on display under a shed along one of the highways near the edge of town. It was a ten-wheeler, baggage car and a couple of passenger cars. I hope it’s still there. I think I still have pictures, but finding them might be a problem.
I’m no expert on that area for sure, but I kinda thought it might be the “Meridian Speedway” joint venture of KCS and NS. Well, no - but that’s not far off, as the lines along US 45 and then from Columbus to Artesia both appear to be a northern KCS branch off the Speedway. See this KCS system map (approx. 2.5 MB in size) - the 1st page of KCS only is about 12.5" x 18" in size, but the 2nd page - at 24.55" x 32.26" size - is a really good overview of the US rail system that makes it worthwhile (IMHO):
Artesia is at about these Lat./ Long. coords., per the ACME Mapper 2.0 application: N 33.41883 W 88.64525
Tracing the rail lines on that - and based on the KCS’ depiction - it appears that the ex-Frisco now BNSF line to Mobile goes off from Columbus to the southeast a ways.
It would be interesting to know what KCS does with those lines around Artesia area. The yard seemed pretty full of cars, and the lines were very well maintained. KCS seems to have invested heavily in the track. The Severstall mill in Columbus (my brother in law is a manager there), seems like a very good source of inbound scrap and outbound coils.
Was that area the old Mid South Railroad network that was spun off of the IC back in the 80’s? Didnt IC attempt to purchase that back at some point?
Sure wish I had an old Official Guide with me to look at the heritage of these lines. I forgot that Frisco had a line that headed south. Didnt they also have one to Pensacola?
Update…no railroads in Ft Walton Beach. That is ok, the beach and the pool are fine.
The older USGS large-scale topo maps - never updated, though the smaller-scale and newer ones have been - that come up in the “Topo” view on ACME Mapper 2.0 are almost as good as a Guide ! Somewhat counter-intuitively, you just have to zoom out until the scale is 5 miles to about 1-1/2 inches, or about 1" = 3 miles or so. Frisco did have a continuous line to Pensacola - here are the Lat./ Long. coordinates where its full name appears on one of those zoomed-out maps: N 30.90576 W 87.50885
It turns out that I was perhaps somewhat mistaken about the Frisco going all the way to Mobile - apparently it ran northwards parallel to a Southern line about 25 miles as far as a little town called Calvert, at N 31.15288 W 88.01147 . There, the Frisco connected with (had trackage rights over ? ) the Alabama, Tennessee & Northern (!) - see the label here: N 31.32549 W 88.20099 - which turned to the northwest, while the Southern continued straight north about 15 more miles before turning away to the northeast towards Wagar, &etc.
Yep - looks like the nearest tracks are about 20 - 25 miles north, being the CSX line about a mile or so on the far side of I-10. Per the topo maps, there used to be a “U.S. Government Railroad” running from th
FWIW, in 1954 the only game in the town in Artesia was the GM&O. The line running north and south ran northward to Jackson, TN (and on up to St. Louis) and the line southward ran to Mobile. The line running east and west went westward about 11 miles to Starkville on the IC, and the eastward track ended at Montgomery, Alabama; this section had a stub leaving at Tuscaloosa going northeast to Birmingham.
In 1971, the Starkville branch is no longer shown in the Official Guide.
The 2001 SPV Railroad Atlas shows the three lines out of Artesia are owned by the KCS with the present day Columbus and Greenville Railway having trackage rights from Artesia to Columbus and Artesia north to West Point.
KCS ownership ends to the north at Corinth, MS; extends south to Meridian, then west through Jackson, Vicksburg, across Louisiana, and into Texas; extends to the east through Columbus to Tuscaloosa and up to near Birmingham on its own tracks (ex GM&O) or by trackage rights. The tracks in Birmingham are as bad as the tracks in East St.Louis; what a mess!
Edit: Left out that the KCS has trackage rights on the IC from Jackson, MS, south to Hattiesburg, but owns the track from Hattiesburg south to Gulfport.
It would be interesting to know what type of traffic these lines handle. There appears to be no agriculture in the area…other than logging. No doubt the steel mill in Columbus is a big generator of cars, both inbound scrap and outbound finished.
Wikipedia said the G&C runs two trains daily to the steel mill. Not sure if G&C handles the local stuff with KCS handling the line haul.
Anyone know what the BNSF profile is in that area? The ex Frisco main at one time handled quite a bit of transcontinental (Santa Fe - Frisco - SCL). Not sure if that is still there now or now. Perhaps quite a bit of coal.
No idea. Maybe you could stop in at Frisco City*, Monroe County, Alabama on your way back and ask ? [swg] (USGS topo maps on ACME Mapper 2.0 show the rail line through there as being the St. Louis San Francisco on the older ones, Burlington Northern on the newer ones)
*N 31.43269 W 87.39967, about 50 miles NE of Mobile, and about 5 miles SW of Monroeville on Rt. 21
The 2001 SPV Atlas shows that the BNSF no longer uses the SLSF track south of Kimbrough, where it connects with the NS Selma-Mobile line, and has trackage rights into Mobile; the Alabama & Gulf Coast now uses the Frisco’s line between Kimbrough and Pensacola. Apparently, BNSF decided to leave the Pensacola market.
This route into Mobile is at least the third one that was followed by the Frisco and its successors. The first (known to me), was SLSF to Aliceville and then AT&N down to Mobile (the northern end of the AT&N was in Reform, where it interchanged with the M&O-GM&O-ICG). After the AT&N bridge across the Tombigbee fell in (right after a southbound freight passed over it; the conductor on that train told me it was quite sight to see the bridge fall into the river), the Mobile trains ran via Boligee, with trackage rights over the AGS, to York, and then over the AT&N to Mobile (the SLSF crews claimed that they had seniority over AT&N crews Aliceville-York, but the AT&N crews were granted seniority). There may have been another routing, but I do not recall it.
Except for a few miles out of Mobile, there is nothing left of the AT&N now. The last few years that the Aliceville-Reform section was op