Notable Features
Southern and its predecessors were responsible for many firsts in the industry. Starting in 1833, its predecessor, the South Carolina Canal and Rail Road, was the first to carry passengers, U.S. troops and mail on steam-powered trains, and it was the first to operate at night.
On June 17, 1953 the railroad's last steam-powered freight train arrived in Chattanooga, Tennessee behind 2-8-2 locomotive No. 6330.
From dieselization and shop and yard modernization, to computers and the development of special cars and the unit coal train, Southern often was on the cutting edge of change, earning the company its catch phrase, "Southern Gives a Green Light to Innovation."
From 1966, a popular steam locomotive excursion program was instituted under the presidency of W. Graham Claytor, Jr. The steam program survived the merger which formed the new Norfolk Southern Railway in 1982, but was finally discontinued in 1994 but has now been reinstated (on a limited basis) as of 2009.
In the early 2000s a 22 miles (35 km) loop of former Southern Railway right-of-way encircling central Atlanta neighborhoods was acquired and is now the BeltLine trail.
Read more about this topic: Southern Railway (U.S.)
Famous quotes containing the words notable and/or features:
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event—in the living act, the undoubted deed—there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask!”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)