Expanding The R&D
In 1878, the R&D acquired the Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta Railroad.
In 1880, the Richmond and West Point Terminal Railway and Warehouse Company was chartered to acquire railroads which the R&D could not acquire directly due to a limitation in its charter. One of these was the former Richmond and York River Railroad. The Terminal Company quickly purchased over 700 miles (1,100 km) of existing railroads and acquired the franchises for a number of projected lines including the Georgia Pacific Railway and the Rabun Gap Short Line Railway.
In 1881, the R&D leased the Piedmont Air Line system, by then renamed Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line Railway, forming the Richmond and Danville Railroad System.
In 1885, the R&D bought the Lawrenceville-to-Suwanee line in Georgia from the Lawrenceville Branch Railroad. This line was sold to the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line Railway in 1908, and was abandoned in 1920.
The R&D leased the 61-mile (98 km) North Eastern Railroad (Georgia) in 1886. In 1887, the Terminal Company gained control of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway.
In 1888, the Terminal Company purchased the entire capital stock of the Georgia Company, which held a controlling interest in the Central Railroad and Banking Company. In 1889, the 566-mile (911 km) Georgia Pacific Railway was completed and began operation from Atlanta to Greenville, Mississippi. It had been leased to the R &D in January of that year.
In 1890, the Terminal Company acquired a controlling interest in the Alabama Great Southern Railroad.
By 1890, the R&D System covered 3,300 miles (5,300 km) of track in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas. However, the R&D System had become financially unstable during all the growth. In 1892, the R&D and subsidiaries entered receivership.
Reorganized by J.P. Morgan and his New York banking firm of Drexel, Morgan and Company, they emerged in 1894 as the Southern Railway Company, which controlled over 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of line at its inception. In 1980, Southern Railway Company became part of today's Norfolk Southern Railway.
Read more about this topic: Algernon Sidney Buford
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