Макон мен Саваннаны байланыстырған теміржол тарихы

Railroad constructed to join Macon, Georgia, and Savannah, Georgia

The Central of Georgia Railway started as the Central Rail Road and Canal Company in 1833. As a way to better attract investment capital, the railroad changed its name to Central Rail Road and Banking Company of Georgia. This railroad was constructed to join the Macon and Western Railroad at Macon, Georgia, in the United States, and run to Savannah. This created a rail link from Chattanooga, on the Tennessee River, to seaports on the Atlantic Ocean. It took from 1837 to 1843 to build the railroad from Savannah to the eastern bank of the Ocmulgee River at Macon; a bridge into the city was not built until 1851. During the Savannah Campaign of the American Civil War, conducted during November and December 1864, federal troops tore up the rails and converted them into "Sherman's neckties." The company was purchased by the Southern Railway in 1963, and subsequently became part of Norfolk Southern Railway in 1982. Despite the similarity between the two names, the Georgia Central Railway has no ties with the Central of Georgia Railway.

In 1888, the Richmond Terminal Company, a Virginia holding company, gained control of the Central. The financial problems of the parent company forced the CofG into bankruptcy, and it was sold at foreclosure three years later, being reorganized as the Central of Georgia Railway on November 1, 1895. In 1907 railroad magnate and financier E. H. Harriman gained a controlling interest in the railway, and in 1909 sold his interest to the Illinois Central Railroad, which he also controlled. In 1932, during the Great Depression, the CofG went into receivership, from which it did not emerge until 1948. In 1956, the St. Louis San Francisco Railway ("Frisco"), seeking a route to Atlantic Ocean ports, gained control of the CofG, but the Interstate Commerce Commission declined to approve a merger of the two roads, so the Frisco sold its CofG stock to the Southern Railway in 1963. At the end of 1956 the CofG operated 1764 mile (2839 km) of road and 2646 mile (4258 km) of track; that year it reported 3208 million net ton miles of revenue freight and 73 million passenger miles. Those totals do not include the 144 mile (232 km) Savannah and Atlanta, the 10 mile (16 km) L&W, the 20 mile (32 km) Wadley Southern or the 36 mile (58 km) Wrightsville and Tennille. The CofG became a Southern Railway subsidiary on June 17, 1963. In 1971 the Southern formed the Central of Georgia Railroad to merge the Central of Georgia Railway, the Savannah and Atlanta Railway, and the Wrightsville and Tennille Railroad.

Today the Central of Georgia exists only as a paper railroad within the Norfolk Southern Railway group. 42 mile (68 km) of the CofG's former mainline are currently leased by the Chattooga and Chickamauga Railway from the State of Georgia. On April 5, 2012, Norfolk Southern unveiled NS 8101, a GE ES44AC painted in the scheme found on Central of Georgia's diesel locomotives. It was the fourth of 20 units that NS painted in the colors of their predecessors.