Substack

I’ve been thinking about what oddities happened on the rails — and how to define oddity. In all the talks that I’ve given, something interesting has emerged.

It was a rainy Saturday morning — April 12, 1862 — when a group of suspicious men boarded a northbound Western & Atlantic train at Marietta, Georgia. The men held tickets to varying points along the line, trying to make it seem as though they were not a part of one large group.

On the eve of the Civil War, the Western & Atlantic Railroad had more than 45 locomotives on its active roster.

I’m excited to highlight the people and places that made the Western & Atlantic Railroad the truly historic road that it is.