East Atlanta beltline

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While visting my old hometown of Atlanta last weekend, I journeyed out Ponce de Leon Ave, past the site of the old ball park. (Atlanta area 'old heads' will remember the 'Crackers'.) (pre-Braves) At this location is a bridge carrying the old SR beltline over the street. This section of track connected Armour Yard on the Atlanta-Greenville main to the GA RR near Hulsey Yard on the south. Is this route still in service ? If not, approx. when did it go out? From my limited visibilty it appeared to be out of service. The line ran atop a large embankment that helped form the limits of the ballpark's outfield, and I remember hearing that engineers would dally a bit as they came through this area to get a glimpse of a game in progress. The big old Magnolia tree that was on this embankment just beyong centerfield still lives !

-- Greg Hodges (ghodges@smpsfa.com), June 22, 2002

Answers

Hi,

Most of that line is now inactive, within the last two years. There is a short section at Armour yard which is still used because of a turning wye there. At one point, discussion was held about a Rails to Trails application, but not much has come of it. Hpe that this helps,

RO'C

-- Riley O'Connor (roc@rroconnor.com), June 22, 2002.


I believe the connection to the Georgia RR on the south end was removed years ago. Can someone verify that the beltline was actually the original routing of the mainline, before the Brookwood Cutoff was built in the 1910s?

-- Chuck Till (ctill@nc.rr.com), June 28, 2002.

Greg:

This line was abandoned in 2000 when the last two customers (Blue Circle, and Mead Paper) folded up and moved. When I came to work in 1977, we had two jobs out of Inman Yard take transfer cuts up this line to the Hulsey Yard, or as it was known then, "The Georgia Road." This activity ceased in 1980 with the development of the "Family Lines System" which was the forerunner of the present day CSXT. All interchange went straight to CSXT's Tilford Yard instead of up the belt. In addition to the transfer jobs, we also had two jobs working out of Armour Yard (just off Monroe Drive) which worked the customers on this segment. The customers circa 1987 were: Dixie Plywood, National Cement, Sears, Williams Brothers, Mead Paper, and Dynamic Metals. Hope this answers your question.

-- tony skeen (cnductr1@earthlink.net), November 28, 2002.


Other answers are correct about much of that trackage being abandoned. As one travels east on Dekalb Avenue, between Oakland Cemetery and Decatur, you'll actually cross over the tracks. The tracks are unusable at that point since that portion of Hulsey Yard was raised several feet making the tracks literally run into and under the current elevation of Hulsey, the new embankment to which is just a few feet off the road. This portion of Dekalb Avenue is at "Cabbage Town" at the site of a large fire several years ago that burned much of the Fulton Bag Company as that building was being converted to up-scale lofts.

-- Jim Dempsey (jimdempsey2000@yahoo.com), December 28, 2003.

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