SD45 2034 leads a northbound freight along what was - and is - perhaps the most important former Seaboard Air Line route, the Atlanta to Hamlet mainline.

SCL was loaded with high-horsepower B-B diesels in the early 1970s when it - maybe because of sister road L&N's success with the model - decided to purchase 56 GP38-2s in 1973. They'd get four mo... (more)

Three of BN's eight former Great Northern SDP45s roar upgrade past the scenic Southern yard and shop at Huntingburg with the daily Louisville-Beardstown run-through. For a while in 1982, the SDP4... (more)

Southern local crew works around Opelika. An important segment of the business then was wood/wood products, as evidenced by the many bulkhead flats in the photo. At the right edge can be seen co... (more)

My most most frequently sighted - and least favorite - locomotive when I started fanning in the early 1970s in east Alabama was the Southern GP38 (or GP38-2). Square, black, run-of-the-mill blah.... (more)

The last locomotive delivered in WofA's gaudy black-on-black-on-black scheme waits for a Southern freight to clear the crossing.

A unit train heads for the coal terminal on McD Island with typical L&N coal power for south Alabama in the early '80s - a trio of GP38s with a recently rebuilt U28B (or U30B) helping out.

Molena had only about 400 residents in 1976, but it must have had a pretty decent cafe to persuade 43's crew to stop, since it was less than 10 miles on to the metropolis of Woodbury, population 1... (more)

If memory serves, by the time of this photo, service on this line - which had just a few years left - was Griffin-Columbus M-W-F, with return trips (train 44) on T-Th-Sat.

The homeward-bound turn passes a derailed hopper on the siding near Murray Dam as it heads out of Little Rock into the setting sun.

Power for a coal train backs through the switches north of Union Station.

The wires have come down, but the pole line remains, some poles even having what look like new crossarms. Thirty years later, this location s probably completely closed in with vegetation.

After leaving his train of empty bulkhead cars on the 'main' in the foreground, the engineer gingerly shoves cars up the steeply inclined lead to a small wood yard. The GP30 looks pretty clean, b... (more)

One of the Southern agents in Opelika either had a warped sense of humor, or maybe just did not like me. Whatever the reason, he on multiple occasions gave incorrect info about what trains were w... (more)

A trio of SD40-2s leads an eastbound freight past the last remnant of the passenger platforms that once ran down the north and west sides of the shared (CofG/SOU/NS and WofA/FL/SBD/CSX) Opelika de... (more)