Georgia Railroad and Banking Company - Post War Years

Post War Years

The Georgia Railroad Freight Depot, designed by architect Max Corput, was completed in 1869 and is the oldest building in Downtown Atlanta. The company was later rechartered as the Georgia Railroad Bank, then a subsidiary of the First Railroad and Banking Company, which eventually opened banks in Atlanta under the name of First Georgia Bank.

The banking operations were merged with First Union in 1986 and First Union subsequently merged with Wachovia Corporation.

The Georgia Railroad Bank entered the insurance business using subsidiaries such as First of Georgia, however these were subsequently sold at considerable profit to the company.

In 1881, the president of the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia, Colonel William M. Wadley, personally leased the railroad properties of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company, including the A&WP and WofA. Wadley assigned half of the lease to the Central and half to the L&N. Following the panic of 1897, the Central went into receivership and its portion of the lease lapsed, whereupon it was eventually reassigned to the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. In 1902, the ACL acquired controlling interest in the L&N and thus the Georgia, A&WP and WofA became non-operating subsidiaries of the ACL.

With the building of the Savannah and Atlanta Railroad, which connected with the Georgia Railroad at Warrenton, Georgia, the Georgia Railroad now competed with the Central of Georgia Railroad for traffic to and from Savannah. Soon, however, the ACL came to dominate the Augusta interchange traffic through its Charleston and Western Carolina Railway subsidiary and the ACL's own spur from its main line at Florence, South Carolina, so now the Georgia Railroad could compete with the Seaboard Air Line Railroad and Southern Railway (U.S.) for traffic from Atlanta up the eastern seaboard.

A unique feature of the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company charter was that the legislature gave the corporation a huge tax break. That was challenged many times in the courts, but the company always won. The charter also called for daily except Sunday passenger service. The lawyers advised management to maintain passenger service on all lines so as to not violate the charter, and thus the Georgia was perhaps the last railroad to operate mixed trains in the "Lower 48," well into the Amtrak era.