Atlantic Coast Line Railroad: "Standard Railroad of the South"

Last revised: October 6, 2026

The Atlantic Coast Line was the railroad of the South Atlantic coast and of Florida’s winter season. From Richmond and Norfolk it ran south through Wilmington, Florence, Charleston, Savannah, and Jacksonville, then fanned out to Tampa, St. Petersburg, and the Gulf. William T. Walters of Baltimore gathered the pieces after the Civil War. On April 21, 1900 they became one company. In 1902 that company bought Henry B. Plant’s Florida lines and a controlling interest in the Louisville & Nashville. The slogan on the cars was the Standard Railroad of the South.

Coast Line stayed profitable through the Depression, dieselized its main lines in the 1940s and early 1950s, and on July 1, 1967 merged with the rival it had raced to Florida for sixty years, the Seaboard Air Line. The new company was the Seaboard Coast Line. The locomotives are on their own pages: steam, built since 1900, and the all-time diesel roster.

New Atlantic Coast Line F3s in the original purple, silver, and yellow, at Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1940s. Wiley Bryan photo. Warren Calloway collection. Tom Alderman colorization.

On this page: At a glance · Five railroads · April 21, 1900 · Plant System and the L&N · Clinchfield, AB&C, Perry Cutoff · Passenger trains · Purple, then black · July 1, 1967 · What remains

At a glance

Item	Detail
Railroad	Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company. Mark ACL. The Coast Line
Slogan	Standard Railroad of the South
Headquarters	Wilmington, North Carolina, until the move of 1960. Then 500 Water Street, Jacksonville, Florida
Formed	April 21, 1900. The advertising name Atlantic Coast Line dates from 1871
Last day	June 30, 1967. Seaboard Coast Line began July 1, 1967
States	Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama
Own route	5,570 miles of its own lines at the end of 1960, excluding the West Point Route roads, the Columbia, Newberry & Laurens, the East Carolina, the Georgia, the Rockingham, or the Virginia & Carolina Southern
Controlled roads	Louisville & Nashville, from November 1902. Clinchfield, 999-year lease of October 16, 1924. Atlanta, Birmingham & Coast, control in 1926, merged at the end of 1945
Main line	Richmond–Florence–Savannah–Jacksonville–Tampa, with the Wilmington–Florence line and the lines west to Montgomery, Atlanta, and Birmingham
Gauge	4 feet, 8½ inches
Last steam	June 30, 1955
Paint	Royal purple, aluminum, and yellow on the first-generation passenger diesels. Black with yellow and silver from 1957, under W. Thomas Rice
Successor	Seaboard Coast Line, then Seaboard System, then CSX Transportation

Five railroads, and a Baltimore investor

The earliest piece was the Petersburg Railroad, chartered in 1830, from Petersburg, Virginia, to Garysburg, North Carolina, across the Roanoke from Weldon. The Richmond & Petersburg, chartered in 1836, was finished between its namesake cities in 1838. Together they made a route from Richmond into North Carolina.

South of Weldon, the Wilmington & Raleigh was chartered in 1834 and opened between Wilmington and Weldon in 1840. It never reached the state capital. In 1855 it took the name its map had already earned, the Wilmington & Weldon. The Wilmington & Manchester, chartered in 1846, was completed in 1853 from Wilmington to Manchester, South Carolina. The Northeastern Railroad, chartered in 1853, opened in 1857 from Charleston up to the junction that became Florence. The five companies ran as separate railroads through the Civil War.

William T. Walters put them under one hand after the war. By 1871 the through passenger route was being advertised as the Atlantic Coast Line. The cars still belonged to the old companies. Wilmington remained the operating center, and it stayed the headquarters until 1960.

April 21, 1900

The legal assembly took the last years of the century. Most of the South Carolina lines were consolidated in 1897–98 as the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company of South Carolina, itself a merger of the Wilmington, Columbia & Augusta, the Northeastern, the Cheraw & Darlington, the Manchester & Augusta, and the Florence Railroad. In 1898 the Petersburg Railroad and the Richmond & Petersburg merged into the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company of Virginia. North Carolina’s lines followed in 1899.

Virginia’s regulatory climate suited a holding company better than the Carolinas’. On April 21, 1900 the Virginia company absorbed the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad of South Carolina, took in the Wilmington & Weldon and the Norfolk & Carolina, and was rechartered as the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company. A short Virginia railroad had just acquired more than 1,500 miles. In 1900 the map ran from Richmond and Norfolk to Augusta, Georgia, and Charleston.

The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad logo, in purple. Author’s work.

The Atlantic Coast Line’s traditional logo. Author’s work.

The Plant System, then the L&N

Henry B. Plant had spent twenty years building the other end of the same coast. His earliest large piece was the Atlantic & Gulf, bought out of bankruptcy in November 1879 and reorganized as the Savannah, Florida & Western: Savannah to Bainbridge, then Jacksonville, Waycross, Live Oak, Gainesville, and the Chattahoochee. In 1882 he put the railroads into the Plant Investment Company. In 1893 he added the South Florida Railroad, a three-foot line standard-gauged in 1886, which had opened Sanford to Tampa by early 1884. At Tampa he built a deep-water port. In 1899 he took the Jacksonville, Tampa & Key West, the 1886 line from Jacksonville to Sanford, and renamed it the Jacksonville & St. Johns River Railway. Smaller roads folded into the Savannah, Florida & Western included the Charleston & Savannah, the Brunswick & Western, the Alabama Midland, and the lines that reached Albany and Thomasville.

The Coast Line bought the Plant System outright in April 1902. The purchase carried the map across southeast Georgia and down the Florida peninsula, with the long branch from Bainbridge northwest to Montgomery. One of the Plant System’s last projects, the Folkston Cutoff between Folkston and Jesup, had opened in 1901 as a way around Waycross. In 1904 the Coast Line added the Jacksonville & Southwestern, from Jacksonville to Newberry, and began tying the Florida lines into a west-coast route.

In November 1902 the Coast Line bought control of the Louisville & Nashville, and with it a voice in the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, which the L&N already dominated. The L&N was left to run itself. It reached Louisville, the Kentucky and Tennessee coalfields, Birmingham, the Florida Panhandle, and New Orleans. Between the Coast Line’s own railroad, the L&N, and the Southern, the South had three strong systems. The Coast Line was the one that owned the direct route from the Northeast to Florida.

The same years brought the West Point Route into joint ACL and L&N hands: the Georgia Railroad and its controlled Atlanta & West Point and Western Railway of Alabama, Augusta to Selma by way of Atlanta and Montgomery, with branches to Macon and Athens. The Charleston & Western Carolina, about 340 miles from Port Royal through Augusta to Anderson, Greenville, and Spartanburg, was already an ACL property. It kept its own locomotives until they were lettered Coast Line; the GP7s came onto the diesel roster under their C&WC numbers.

Clinchfield coal, the AB&C, and the Perry Cutoff

The Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio was the coal railroad the Coast Line wanted and the Seaboard also wanted. It ran from the Kentucky coalfield at Elkhorn City, through Dante and Erwin, to Spartanburg, where it met the Coast Line. The Interstate Commerce Commission authorized a joint ACL and L&N lease on June 12, 1924. The indenture is dated October 16, 1924, a 999-year lease measured from May 11, 1923. The operating company, the Clinchfield Railroad, took the property at the end of 1924 and was required to stay a separate railroad with open connections. Erwin remained the headquarters. The encyclopedia is the Clinchfield.

West of Waycross, the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic had been built between 1908 and 1910 from Brunswick and Waycross to Atlanta and Birmingham, and it was in trouble before the last spike. George H. Drury records that the Coast Line took control in 1926 and reorganized the property as the Atlanta, Birmingham & Coast. The line was the Coast Line’s way into Atlanta and Birmingham, and it crossed the same ridges the Alabama Midland crossed between Bainbridge and Montgomery. The AB&C was merged into the Coast Line at the end of 1945. Its secondhand locomotives came with it. They are the A-prefix classes on the steam roster.

The last new main line was the Perry Cutoff, finished in 1928 between the old Plant System branch at Monticello and the line the Coast Line had already built toward Dunnellon. Midwest-to-Gulf-coast trains could leave the Jacksonville hub and run Thomasville–Albany–Montgomery toward the L&N. The Southland shifted to that route in December 1928.

Through the 1920s the Richmond–Jacksonville main was double-tracked, in time for the Florida boom. The shops that maintained it grew up at South Rocky Mount and at Waycross. In 1926 the company spent about $2 million on the Uceta shops and yard at Tampa, for the Florida extension. Florence and Wilmington were the older plants, Wilmington’s going back to 1840.

Official 1940 system map of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad

An official 1940 system map of the Atlantic Coast Line. Author’s collection.

System map of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in the 1950s

A system map of the Atlantic Coast Line in the 1950s. Author’s work.

Florida trains

New York trains reached Washington on the Pennsylvania and Richmond on the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac. South of Richmond they were Coast Line trains. Miami cars went to the Florida East Coast at Jacksonville until the FEC strike of 1963, and then moved to Seaboard rails at Auburndale. Tampa and St. Petersburg cars stayed on home rails the whole way.

The winter flagship was the Florida Special, New York to Miami and St. Petersburg, the Coast Line’s answer to the Seaboard’s Orange Blossom Special. The all-coach Champion entered service on December 1, 1939, between New York and Miami, after the Seaboard’s Silver Meteor of February 2 that year. Beside them ran the Vacationer, the Everglades to Jacksonville, the Gulf Coast Special to Tampa, Fort Myers, and St. Petersburg, the Miamian from Washington, and the Palmetto for Savannah, Augusta, and Wilmington. The Havana Special had gone through to Key West until the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 destroyed the FEC’s overseas extension.

Midwest trains used Coast Line rails on the south end and often L&N or other partners on the north end: the Southland via the Perry Cutoff, the South Wind, the Flamingo, the Dixie Flyer, the Seminole, and the City of Miami. By 1939, Drury notes, 14 percent of the railroad’s freight revenue came from oranges and grapefruit. The same geography that filled the passenger trains filled the refrigerator cars. Much of the east-coast freight was handed to the Florida East Coast at Jacksonville. Until the branches were rebuilt, the heaviest locomotives stayed north of that gateway.

Passenger revenue fell from $28.5 million in 1946 to $14.1 million in 1959, and the company kept buying cars and replacing stations into the 1960s because the winter trains still earned their keep. Larry Goolsby’s account of the postwar passenger service records schedules at 90 miles an hour, and a brief trial of 100.

Atlantic Coast Line E7s led by 533 waiting at Jacksonville Florida in 1957

Atlantic Coast Line E7s in an A-B-A set, led by No. 533, at Jacksonville, Florida, in 1957. Photographer unknown.

Champ Davis, purple paint, and the end of steam

The Depression cut freight traffic by about 60 percent. The Coast Line did not go bankrupt. The L&N dividend and a habit of spending slowly carried the 1930s. In 1942 Champion McDowell Davis, who had started on the railroad in the 1890s as a messenger, became president. Mike Schafer credits the program Davis then ran, through the mid-1950s, with $268 million in track, signals, and yards. Wartime made the railroad a substitute for coastal shipping: passenger traffic up about 200 percent, freight about 150 percent.

The first diesel was a switcher, Alco HH660 No. 1900, in March 1939. The locomotives people remember came in November: E3A Nos. 500 and 501, for the Champion. General Motors’ styling department dressed them in royal purple, aluminum, and yellow. Drury’s count of the early freight cabs is 24 two-unit FT sets and 12 two-unit F2s by 1946. By 1952 diesels were handling 99 percent of the trains. At the end of 1954 six steam locomotives were left, five of them built before 1920. The last steam locomotive was retired on June 30, 1955.

Electro-Motive builder photo of a new Atlantic Coast Line F7 A-B set in September 1951

Electro-Motive builder photograph of a new Atlantic Coast Line F7 A-B set, September 1951.

The purple would not hold under a Florida sun. Repainting it was a steady cost. In 1957, under president W. Thomas Rice, the railroad went to black with yellow and silver. The second-generation hood units, the GP30s and the six-motor Alcos and GEs, were delivered in that black. The roster, including the serials and the Seaboard Coast Line numbers, is the diesel page. The class grid of the steam that came before is the steam page.

Atlantic Coast Line F3A 343 with F7 grilles at Rocky Mount North Carolina on November 27 1965

Atlantic Coast Line F3A No. 343, fitted with F7 grilles, at Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on November 27, 1965. Photographer unknown. American-Rails.com collection.

Atlantic Coast Line F7s with priority freight 175 at Dunn North Carolina on June 20 1965

An A-A-B-A set of Atlantic Coast Line F7s with priority freight No. 175 at Dunn, North Carolina, on June 20, 1965. Warren Calloway photo.

A pair of Atlantic Coast Line C628s with a freight at Rocky Mount, North Carolina, in the 1960s. Warren Calloway photo.

New Atlantic Coast Line C630 2011 at the American Locomotive Company plant in Schenectady about 1965

New Atlantic Coast Line C630 No. 2011, one of three, at Alco’s Schenectady plant, about 1965. Warren Calloway collection.

In 1956 the company chose Jacksonville over Savannah and Charleston for a new headquarters. The building at 500 Water Street was finished in July 1960, and the move out of Wilmington was completed over the following weeks.

July 1, 1967

Coast Line and Seaboard discussed a merger as early as October 1958. The two railroads paralleled each other from Virginia to Florida, and a single company could give up a large amount of duplicate railroad. Shareholders of both approved the merger on August 18, 1960. The Interstate Commerce Commission approved it in 1963. A court remanded that approval on May 13, 1965. Further decisions in 1966 let it proceed. On July 1, 1967 the two became the Seaboard Coast Line.

The L&N, the Clinchfield, and the West Point Route stayed separate companies and were marketed with the Seaboard Coast Line as the Family Lines. On December 29, 1982 the Seaboard Coast Line and the Louisville & Nashville merged into the Seaboard System. CSX Corporation had existed since November 1, 1980. CSX Transportation began on July 1, 1986 and absorbed the Seaboard System roads. The Family Lines story is its own page, as is the Seaboard Coast Line.

What remains

CSX still runs the old Coast Line main from Richmond through Florence and Savannah to Jacksonville, and much of the Florida railroad south and west of there. Other pieces have gone to short lines or have been taken up. Rocky Mount, Waycross, and Uceta remained major shops well into the CSX years. Pacific No. 1504, a USRA light engine of 1919, stands at the Prime F. Osborn III Convention Center in Jacksonville, the former Jacksonville Terminal. E3A No. 501, one of the two Champion locomotives of 1939, is at the North Carolina Transportation Museum.

Sources

George H. Drury, Guide to North American Steam Locomotives, revised edition, Atlantic Coast Line chapter, pp. 69–72. Control of the Atlanta, Birmingham & Atlantic in 1926; AB&C merged at the end of 1945. Fourteen percent of 1939 freight revenue from oranges and grapefruit. Twenty-four two-unit FT sets and twelve two-unit F2s by 1946. Ninety-nine percent diesel by 1952. Six steam locomotives at the end of 1954, five of them built before 1920; none a year later
Richard E. Prince, Atlantic Coast Line Railroad: Steam Locomotives, Ships and History (1966). The company’s own The Story of the Atlantic Coast Line, 1830–1930
Carolana.com, South Carolina Railroads, Atlantic Coast Line: Atlantic Coast Line Railroad of South Carolina incorporated March 5, 1897; absorbed by the Virginia company and rechartered as the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company on April 21, 1900. Plant System purchased April 1902. Majority of L&N stock, November 1902
University of North Carolina, Southern Historical Collection, Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company Records: L&N control in November 1902; Clinchfield lease 1924
The New York Times, June 13, 1924: ICC authority, June 12, 1924, for the ACL and L&N to lease the Clinchfield. Lease indenture October 16, 1924, 999 years from May 11, 1923. North Carolina Corporation Commission report for 1929–30 confirms the October 16, 1924 date
Mike Schafer, Classic American Railroads, Volume III (MBI, 2003), pp. 9–17. Davis program and the $268 million figure. Passenger revenue $28.5 million in 1946 and $14.1 million in 1959. Last steam June 30, 1955
Douglas B. Nuckles, Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (TLC, 1995). Merger discussions from October 1958. Shareholder approval August 18, 1960. Court remand May 13, 1965. Merger July 1, 1967
Larry Goolsby, Atlantic Coast Line Passenger Service: The Postwar Years. Purple paint, the 1957 black scheme under W. Thomas Rice, and the 90-mile-an-hour schedules
Perry Cutoff completed 1928; the Southland shifted to it in December 1928. Headquarters city chosen in 1956; 500 Water Street finished July 1960
Martin Baumann, Atlantic Coast Line diesel roster, thedieselshop.us, revised July 15, 2018. Alco HH660 No. 1900, March 1939, is the first diesel on that roster. E3A 500 and 501, November 1939

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