SAL Silver Comet between Atlanta and Rockmart, GA

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Does anyone know when the Silver Comet made its last run between Atlanta and Birmingham?

The route between Atlanta and Rockmart is now a bicycle trail. Does anyone know when the rail line was abandoned?

Thanks

George Harper

-- George Harper (harperg@mail.floyd.public.lib.ga.us), July 23, 2000

Answers

The rails were taken up on this line, if memory serves me right, in 1991. I think the last train over this line (not counting the work train that took up the rails) was in '89 or '90. I'm in Baltimore now, but I grew up near Rockmart, a couple hundred yards from the SAL tracks. When I was a little kid, Phil Lumpkin, Robert McDowell and I used to play in the woods along the tracks. This was back when RR's advertized their passenger service on the sides of boxcars. I think I learned to read (or at least improved my reading skills) reading the slogans on the sides of boxcars as the eastbound freights ground their way up the grade toward Divide tunnel. --Lamar Wadsworth

-- Lamar Wadsworth (lw.sou.ry.steam@juno.com), July 23, 2000.

The last SCL timetable to show the SILVER COMET is dated Dec. 16, 1968. The next SCL timetable, April 27, 1969, shows Atlanta-Birmingham as freight only. The COMET would have been dropped between those two dates, but at least by April 26, '69. Perhaps someone else has the exact date.

-- Tom Underwood (tlunder@attglobal.net), July 23, 2000.

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