Alabama Great Southern Railroad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alabama Great Southern Railroad
Reporting marks	AGS
Locale	Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi
Dates of operation	1877–1895 Southern Railway subsidiary
Track gauge	4 ft 8½ in (1435 mm) (standard gauge)

The Alabama Great Southern Railroad Company, Ltd., (AGS) a British company, was organized in 1877 by railroad investor Emile Erlanger as the successor to the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad (A&C). The A&C had completed about 230 miles of a planned 293-mile line from Chattanooga to Meridian, Mississippi. About 25 of these miles were in Georgia, including a section from Trenton to Wauhatchie that had been built in 1860 as the Wills Valley Railroad.

In the late nineteenth century, the AGS was one of the five railroads that comprised the Queen and Crescent Route between Cincinnati, the Queen City of the Midwest, and New Orleans, the Crescent City.

In April, 1890 the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway (ETV&G) and the Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) purchased a controlling interest in the AGS. After 1895 it was controlled by the Southern Railway, successor to the R&D and ETV&G. Today it is in operation as a division of Norfolk Southern Railway.

Poor’s 1917 Manual indicated the company had 90 locomotives and over 5,000 railroad cars.