ACL line into Downtown Atlanta

greenspun.com : LUSENET : ACL and SAL Railroads Historical Society : One Thread

Does any one have a good description of how the old ACL (AB&C)line connected in the downtown Atlanta area? You can still see the old roadbed up to where it is severed on the other side of Northside Drive across from the Ga Dome North Parking lot. Did ACL have a yard where the dome is? Other than an apparant then existant connection to the L&N circle track on the west side (which CSX uses today), at what point did the ACL line connect to the other downtown lines? How did the ACL pax trains go to Union Station?

-- Tom Randall (tom.randall@delta-air.com), January 05, 2000

Answers

Thanks so much for the info! So much of roadbed in that area is wiped out now it is hard to tell how it all fit. I will swoop by and try to find any remnants of the Bellwood interlocking area.

-- Tom Randall (tom.randall@delta-air.com), January 05, 2000.

Tom:

The ACL had some team tracks and a freight house in the area where the Georgia Dome sits. While I was working on design of the MARTA West Line in the late 70's we had to keep these tracks in service because the Ringling circus train used them for unloading. The Division Engineer's office was on the second floor of the freight house. The north approach to the area was on a fill that had several concrete arch bridges with Atlantic Coast Line cast into them. There was also a "tunnel" under Bankhead Avenue, the south portal of which was part of the foundation for a building on Bankhead. The line crossed over Northside Drive on an interesting combination of plate girder bridges. There was a switchback track arrangement on south side that served a small coal fired Georgia Power generating station. Theis plant was switched by a flat bed electric trolley motor up 'til the mid sixties - the last such operation in Atlanta, and probably the Southeast. Back at the freight house area the was a track that looped around to the east and joined the Southern Railway near where Techwood crosses overhead now, but that was gone by the mid-70's.

Passenger trains had another route to Union Station. It split from the previous line east of the Bellwood Yard wye and ran parallel to and north of Bankhead Avenue, and turned south just before passing under Northside Drive where Northside crosses the Southern and L&N. The ACL line croosed the Southern on a series of crossing diamonds and joined the L&N for the trip to Union Station. This location was Bellwood Interlocking. The old Northside Drive overhead bridge had a separate span over the right-of-way for the ACL, and the tower foundations were still visible in the mid-70's. Several of the Richard Prince books have photographs he took at this location.

-- Gary Bechdol (gbechdol@rwhitehead.com), January 05, 2000.


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