Southern local crew works around Opelika. An important segment of the business then was wood/wood products, as evidenced by the many bulkhead flats in the photo. At the right edge can be seen co... (more)

My most most frequently sighted - and least favorite - locomotive when I started fanning in the early 1970s in east Alabama was the Southern GP38 (or GP38-2). Square, black, run-of-the-mill blah.... (more)

Molena had only about 400 residents in 1976, but it must have had a pretty decent cafe to persuade 43's crew to stop, since it was less than 10 miles on to the metropolis of Woodbury, population 1... (more)

If memory serves, by the time of this photo, service on this line - which had just a few years left - was Griffin-Columbus M-W-F, with return trips (train 44) on T-Th-Sat.

After leaving his train of empty bulkhead cars on the 'main' in the foreground, the engineer gingerly shoves cars up the steeply inclined lead to a small wood yard. The GP30 looks pretty clean, b... (more)

One of the Southern agents in Opelika either had a warped sense of humor, or maybe just did not like me. Whatever the reason, he on multiple occasions gave incorrect info about what trains were w... (more)

A trio of SD40-2s leads an eastbound freight past the last remnant of the passenger platforms that once ran down the north and west sides of the shared (CofG/SOU/NS and WofA/FL/SBD/CSX) Opelika de... (more)

Westbound local nears Canton, NC behind GP38-2 #5112 in October 1988.

Two Southern painted U23Bs prepare to depart Greenville southbound in November 1989.

Southern's long-distance local bumps across the Western with the usual assortment of log flats. In the background is a boxcar still in CofG colors, and the hood of a Southern diesel, one of two t... (more)

Returning from a run to Lafayette and Roanoke with a short train, #7 has just entered the WofA main for a short trackage rights hop down the hill to Opelika. The Southern folks are probably eyein... (more)

Southern trains to Savannah and Augusta, as well as Georgia Railroad mixed trains to Camak, had to cross several overpasses between Macon Junction and the river. The bridges, which carried the ... (more)

This former Central of Georgia line once ran from a connection with CofG's Macon-Savannah main at Gordon all the way to an interchange with onetime CofG affiliate Georgia Railroad at Covington. B... (more)

A GP works a long cut of single-stack IM cars (was there a clearance issue on SOU back then?) just north of the crossing with SCL's former ACL main, visible at bottom of photo.

An eastbound Milwaukee Road freight with a pair of leased Southern SD24's hugs the banks of the Mississippi River between Pleasant Valley and Le Claire. The SD24's eventually received Precision N... (more)