For this first episode of “People and Places of the Western & Atlantic Railroad,” we’re in the historic Smyrna Memorial Cemetery in Smyrna, Georgia, not far from the Western & Atlantic Railroad.
Todd DeFeo, founder of The DeFeo Groupe and the publisher and editor of Railfanning.org, will lead a bus tour of the historic Western & Atlantic Railroad on Saturday, April 1, 2023.
It was about 3:30 p.m. on July 6, 1862, ostensibly a typical Sunday during the early years of the Civil War, when two trains collided near Ringgold, Georgia, on the Western & Atlantic Railroad.
It was 7 a.m. on Dec. 1, 1849, and the western portion of the Western & Atlantic Railroad was open for business, even if the tunnel at Tunnel Hill was more than five months away from completion.