Atlantic & Birmingham Railway

Originally chartered on October 24, 1887, as the Waycross Air Line Railroad, the A&B opened its first 25-mile section from Waycross to Sessoms in 1890, then extended the line to Nicholls in 1897, Douglas in 1900, and Fitzgerald in 1901. In November 1901, its charter was amended to authorize an extension to Birmingham and to change its name to the Atlantic & Birmingham Railroad. The first line completed under those expanded powers ran between Fitzgerald and Cordele on May 25, 1902, and the Cordele-to-Montezuma section, 31 miles long, entered operation in March 1903 as surveys advanced from Montezuma toward Birmingham that same year. In 1903, the A&B purchased the Tifton & Northeastern Railroad and the Tifton, Thomasville & Gulf Railway, merged them into the parent company, and renamed it the Atlantic & Birmingham Railway. In March 1904, it bought the Brunswick & Birmingham Railroad, whose lines from Brunswick to Nicholls and from Bushnell to the Alapaha River at Crystal Lake gave the system an important connection to the port at Brunswick. In 1905, the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic Railroad was organized to purchase the A&B and extend it west to Birmingham and north to Atlanta, at a time when the A&B had become a 340-mile system with tracks from Brunswick to Montezuma, Waycross to Nicholls, Fitzgerald to Thomasville, and Bushnell to Crystal Lake.

Cordele, Georgia · United States