Features

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Historic Profiles

Rome Railroad

August 24, 2006 Railfanning.org

ROME, Ga. – The Rome Railroad was founded on Dec. 21, 1839, as the Memphis Branch Railroad and Steamboat Company of Georgia. The line’s 20-mile route between Rome, Ga., and Kingston, Ga., was completed in 1849. The following year, the company changed its name to the Rome Railroad Company. “From Rome, cotton and other commodities were shipped down river on the Coosa to Gadsden, Alabama and other points,” reads a historical marker in Kingston. The route was sold to the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway in 1894, which by that time leased the Western & Atlantic Railroad, which passed

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History

The “Fast Mail”: A History of the U.S. Railway Mail Service

December 31, 2005 Fred Romanski

The “Fast Mail”: A History of the U.S. Railway Mail Service By Fred J. Romanski · Prologue, Fall 2005, Vol. 37, No. 3 The railroad station attendant at Mishawaka, Indiana, hurried to tie the morning mail pouch to a crane aside the tracks of the station, in anticipation of the morning passing of the “20th Century Limited,” the premier train on the New York Central System, then quickly approaching the small station. As the “Century” entered a gentle curve leading to the station, a clerk in the door of its railway post office car surveyed the passing landscape, looking for

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History

Traffic Booming on Historic ‘Stormy’

August 31, 2005 The Cross-Tie

Railroaders call it the “Stormy” for its wild summer thunderstorms. Historians call it the Sunset Route. It has become a vital link handling booming traffic, and to address this growth, the 760-mile Union Pacific corridor between Los Angeles and El Paso is in the midst of an on-going effort to add capacity.