Also known as the Suwanee River Route from its crossing of the Suwanee River, the Georgia Southern and Florida Railway (reporting mark GSF) was founded in 1885 as the Georgia Southern and Florida Railroad and began operations between Macon, GA and Valdosta, GA in 1889, extending to Palatka, FL in 1890. The railroad went bankrupt by 1891, was reorganized as the Georgia Southern and Florida Railway in 1895, and was mostly under the control of the Southern Railway.
In 1902, the GS&F purchased a line from the Atlantic, Valdosta and Western Railway that ran from Valdosta, GA to Jacksonville, FL. The GS&F also owned the Macon and Birmingham Railway and the Hawkinsville and Florida Southern Railway, both of which were operated as separate companies; both ended up going bankrupt and being mostly abandoned. The GS&F was eventually acquired by the Norfolk Southern Railway and still operates as a subsidiary. As of November 2012, at least one operating Norfolk Southern locomotive retains GSF reporting marks.
Famous quotes containing the words georgia, southern, florida and/or railway:
“Being a Georgia author is a rather specious dignity, on the same order as, for the pig, being a Talmadge ham.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“When Abraham Lincoln penned the immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire whether every man and every woman in Southern slavery did or did not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does not affect the question of their right to do so.”
—Mary E. Haggart, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“In Florida consider the flamingo,
Its color passion but its neck a question.”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)