Silver Comet Trail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Silver Comet Trail is Georgia's most ambitious rails-to-trails project. It was named for the Silver Comet passenger train that used the identical route from 1947 to 1968.
Now it is a paved, multi-use recreational trail that currently begins in Smyrna, Georgia and runs west through Paulding and Polk counties, then into Alabama's Chief Ladiga Trail.
The Silver Comet Trail is paved continuously for over 57 miles from Smyrna to about 2 miles past the town of Rockmart. From there, there is a gap in the Trail for about 12 miles, from Rockmart to the town of Cedartown. While there is no Silver Comet Trail route between Rockmart and Cedartown, this span can be ridden on some scenic, fairly low traffic roads. From Cedartown on to the Alabama state line, it is paved for 9.25 miles.
When completed, the Silver Comet Trail will start in Atlanta, Georgia and end at the Georgia / Alabama state line, where it will connect to the 33-mile long Chief Ladiga Trail that ends in Anniston, Alabama. When construction on the Silver Comet and Chief Ladiga is finished, the trails will join to form one continuous 101 mile trail from Atlanta, Georgia to Anniston, Alabama.[1]
Future plans include extending the Georgia end of the trail into the Atlanta city limits. According to the Cobb County Dept of Transportation, the eastern extension of the trail will extend to the Cumberland-Galleria area, the largest employment Center in Cobb County
In 1947, the Silver Comet Train was introduced by the Seaboard Air-Line Railway during the height of the Rail Era. Due to the rising popularity of airline travel, the Silver Comet was downgraded in the mid 1950s, losing its sleeper-lounger cars. In 1969, the Silver Comet was downgraded again and finally discontinued by the end of the year. In 1986, the Seaboard Air-Line Railway, along with numerous other railways, merged with the CSXT.
In 1989, the CSX Railroad informed the state of Georgia it was abandoning the 36 miles of railroad from Cobb County, through Paulding and Polk Counties; the former Silver Comet Train’s route through Georgia. By 1990, the idea of turning the abandoned rail into a multi-use trail formed by multiple groups, including the Georgia Rails-Into-Trails group. In 1992, the Georgia Department of Transportation bought the abandoned CSX rail line for future use as a high-speed transit route, but later that year Ron Griffith, Director of Cobb County Parks, requested a lease agreement between Cobb County and the Georgia DOT to use the rail line as a multi-use trail. The Cobb County Board of Commissioners approved the multi-use trail plan in November. In January of 1995, the East-West Connector agreement was signed with an included requirement of Cobb County to develop a plan for converting the rail into a trail.
The Cobb County Board of Commissioners allowed Cobb Land Trust a budget of $30,000 for the county to acquire a consultant to help develop a design for the multi-use trail in 1996 and a year later the Board allocated $900,000 for the development of a 2-mile section of the rail-trail next to Heritage Park to test the multi-use trail idea. In July of 1998, construction of the Silver Comet Trail began.
By November of the same year, the first section of the Silver Comet Trail opened from Nickajack Creek to Hick’s Road. In 2003, the trail was recognized by the National Park Service as a national recreational trail.
