Charleston and Western Carolina Railway: Map, History, Timetables

Last revised: October 6, 2026

The Charleston and Western Carolina Railway was a South Carolina railroad with a short grip on Georgia at Augusta. It was incorporated on September 16, 1896, to take two properties the Central of Georgia was giving up: the Port Royal & Western Carolina and the Port Royal & Augusta. From Port Royal the line ran through Yemassee and Augusta to Spartanburg, with a branch from McCormick to Anderson and another from Laurens to Greenville.

Charleston passengers changed to Atlantic Coast Line trains at Yemassee, and Savannah passengers did the same. The company’s own rails ended at Port Royal. Coast Line interests held the stock for decades while the railroad kept its name, its reporting mark CWC, and its own locomotives. The operating Atlantic Coast Line merged it on December 31, 1959, as the Western Carolina Division.

A 1952 system map of the Charleston and Western Carolina Railway

A 1952 system map of the Charleston and Western Carolina. The owned main track in the Interstate Commerce Commission valuation was 340.844 miles.

On this page: The two earlier railroads · At a glance · The map · Coast Line control · Passengers and freight · Steam and diesel · After 1959

Port Royal, then the western branches

The oldest piece was the Port Royal Railroad. Construction began in 1870. Twenty-five miles from Port Royal to Yemassee opened in 1871, and the remaining 87.75 miles from Yemassee to Augusta opened in 1873. The finished line was 112.75 miles. A receiver took the property on May 19, 1875. It was sold at foreclosure on June 6, 1878, to the Union Trust Company of New York, and on July 10, 1878, the trust conveyed it to the Port Royal & Augusta Railway, organized by the bondholders.

Richard Prince, in Central of Georgia Railway and Connecting Lines, places the Central of Georgia’s control of the Port Royal & Augusta in 1881. The Interstate Commerce Commission later recorded that a majority of that company’s securities were owned by the Central Railroad and Banking Company of Georgia. Control gave the Central a tidewater terminal at Port Royal. In 1892 the Port Royal & Augusta went back into receivership, and on October 3, 1896, it was sold to the new Charleston and Western Carolina.

West of Augusta the track was built as four companies. The Augusta & Knoxville opened on May 1, 1882, 68.05 miles from Augusta to Greenwood. Agents of the Central built the other three: the Greenwood, Laurens & Spartanburg, 66 miles, completed on September 23, 1885; the Savannah Valley Railroad, 58.23 miles from McCormick to Anderson, completed in 1886; and the Greenville & Laurens, 35.84 miles, completed on September 8, 1886. On October 27, 1886, those four properties were consolidated as the Port Royal & Western Carolina Railway, 228.12 miles. A special act of the Georgia legislature ratified the consolidation on September 21, 1887.

The Augusta & Knoxville and the Greenwood–Spartanburg line were five-foot gauge and changed with the rest of the South in 1886. The Charleston and Western Carolina, organized in 1896, was a standard-gauge railroad.

In 1894 the South Carolina legislature required the Central to give up the South Carolina subsidiaries. Prince records that loss. Foreclosure purchasers Thomas and Ryan bought the Port Royal & Western Carolina. The new company, incorporated under the general laws of South Carolina on September 16, 1896, acquired that property on September 26, and a deed of release followed on November 14. The October 3 sale put the Port Royal & Augusta in the same hands. The Commission’s valuation places the principal office at Charleston.

At a glance

Item	Detail
Headquarters	Principal office at Charleston. Shops and union-station operation at Augusta
States served	South Carolina, and 20.191 miles of main track in Georgia
Incorporated	September 16, 1896
Dates of operation	1896–December 31, 1959
Reporting mark	CWC
Gauge	4 feet, 8½ inches
Owned main track	340.844 miles in the ICC valuation. Early-1950s listings round the system to 341
Principal lines	Port Royal–Yemassee–Augusta–Greenwood–Spartanburg. McCormick–Anderson. Laurens–Greenville
Diesel	All-time diesel roster. Thirty-one Electro-Motive units, 1950–1952
Successor	Atlantic Coast Line, Western Carolina Division, December 31, 1959

Three lines, and a bridge at Spartanburg

The Commission measured the railroad as a single-track line from Port Royal to Spartanburg, 246.803 miles, which is the old port road plus Augusta–Greenwood plus Greenwood–Spartanburg. The Laurens–Greenville branch was 35.841 miles. The McCormick–Anderson branch was 58.200 miles. Owned main track was 340.844 miles, with 91.406 miles of yard tracks and sidings beside it. Of the Port Royal–Spartanburg line, 20.191 miles of main track lay in Georgia, the neck through Augusta. In Augusta the company also used 1.61 miles of other railroads’ main track and leased 2.183 miles of yard tracks.

Line	Owned main track
Port Royal–Spartanburg	246.803 miles
Laurens–Greenville	35.841 miles
McCormick–Anderson	58.200 miles
Total	340.844 miles

Interstate Commerce Commission, Valuation Reports, volume 121. The predecessor deeds had measured the Anderson branch at 58.23 miles and the Greenville branch at 35.84.

Port Royal and Beaufort were the tidewater end. Yemassee was the junction with the Coast Line’s Charleston–Savannah main line. Allendale, Fairfax, and the lowcountry towns lay between Yemassee and Augusta. Above Augusta the line climbed through McCormick and Greenwood to Laurens, then to Spartanburg. Anderson was the end of the Savannah Valley branch. Greenville was the end of the Laurens branch. At Spartanburg the railroad met the Clinchfield, and that meeting is what made the Charleston and Western Carolina a bridge line: Clinchfield coal and through freight on the north, the Coast Line at Augusta and Yemassee on the south.

The company used Augusta Union Station with five other railroads under an agreement of August 1, 1903. It used the Southern’s passenger stations at Spartanburg and Greenwood, and the Blue Ridge Railway’s station at Anderson. On December 1, 1899, the Atlantic Coast Line took a 99-year right to use 28.80 miles of Charleston and Western Carolina main track between Augusta and Robbins, together with the Augusta terminals. The Coast Line was already operating over the south end of the railroad sixty years before the 1959 merger.

Two smaller acquisitions added almost no route. The Augusta Terminal Railway, 3.49 miles of yard track and a warehouse in Augusta, was leased on April 1, 1897, and purchased on March 20, 1906. The Carolina, Knoxville & Western had graded toward an Augusta–Knoxville line and finished only a short piece of track. On April 19, 1899, the Charleston and Western Carolina received rails, equipment, and land in Greenville from that company, and no mileage with them.

Controlled, and still a separate railroad

The operating Coast Line and the holding company that owned it were different corporations. The Commission’s valuation states that the Atlantic Coast Line Company, the holding company, owned the capital stock, apart from the directors’ qualifying shares, and had controlled the carrier since February 1908. The railroad went on lettering its own locomotives. Mark CWC stayed on the diesels of 1950–1952.

On September 18, 1959, the New York Times reported that directors of the Atlantic Coast Line and the Charleston and Western Carolina had approved a merger. The Charleston and Western Carolina was described as a bridge line of 345 miles, wholly owned by the Atlantic Coast Line Company. The operating Coast Line was to issue 130,200 shares of its common stock for the subsidiary’s 84,000 shares. The merger still needed the Interstate Commerce Commission and the stockholders. It took effect on December 31, 1959. The Atlantic Coast Line merged the Charleston and Western Carolina as its Western Carolina Division.

Passengers at Yemassee, freight for the Clinchfield

The company’s own passenger service ran between Augusta and Port Royal, with the transfer stop at Yemassee. A traveler bound for Charleston, or for Savannah, changed there to a Coast Line train. The 1952 public timetable reproduced below still listed that service. Published Official Guide citations keep the trains in the December 1954 Guide and place the end of the service by the December 1957 issue.

A page from the Charleston and Western Carolina public timetable of 1952. Augusta–Port Royal trains were still listed.

Freight was the reason the Coast Line kept the company. Clinchfield traffic came off at Spartanburg for Augusta and for the Coast Line connections farther south. The Anderson and Greenville branches and the lowcountry local freights were the rest of the job. The port at Port Royal remained the south end of the original railroad.

What the roster notes can name

Published roster notes document two of the steam engines with builder data, both taken from Richard Prince’s Atlantic Coast Line Railroad: Steam Locomotives, Ships and History (1966). Ten-Wheeler 252 was a Baldwin of 1907, construction number 31188, class K5 on the Charleston and Western Carolina, one of two in that class, at Augusta in May 1948, and cited as scrapped in 1951. Pacific 1753 was a Baldwin of 1926, construction number 58980, one of two Pacifics lettered for the company and classed P-5-B. The number sits inside the Coast Line’s P-5-B series, 1600–1764. The engine went to the Atlantic Coast Line as 1753 and is cited as scrapped in 1951. Diesels were arriving in those same years.

The diesel fleet was thirty-one Electro-Motive units, all delivered in 1950, 1951, and 1952: twenty-one GP7s numbered 200–220, switchers 800–803, and six F7A cabs numbered 900–905. They wore the Coast Line’s purple, aluminum, and yellow, lettered for the subsidiary. Every unit, with serial, order number, and the Atlantic Coast Line and Seaboard Coast Line numbers, is the diesel roster.

Western Carolina Division, then CSX

On July 1, 1967, the Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard Air Line became the Seaboard Coast Line. The Family Lines name covered that system and its affiliates in the 1970s. Seaboard System Railroad began on December 29, 1982. CSX Corporation dates from November 1, 1980, and CSX Transportation from July 1, 1986.

Most of the old railroad is still in use. CSX operates the surviving main lines as the Augusta Subdivision, the McCormick Subdivision, and the Spartanburg Subdivision. The Carolina Piedmont Railroad operates the Laurens–Greenville remnant. The Clinchfield connection at Spartanburg is still the north end of the bridge.

Sources

Interstate Commerce Commission, Valuation Reports, volume 121, Charleston & Western Carolina Railway, for the September 16, 1896 incorporation, the predecessor mileages and dates, the 340.844-mile measurement, the Georgia mileage, the February 1908 stock control, and the Augusta trackage agreements.
Richard E. Prince, Central of Georgia Railway and Connecting Lines, for Central control of the Port Royal lines in 1881 and for the 1894 loss of the South Carolina subsidiaries.
Richard E. Prince, Atlantic Coast Line Railroad: Steam Locomotives, Ships and History (1966), for Ten-Wheeler 252 and Pacific 1753, as reprinted in later roster notes.
ACL & SAL Railroads Historical Society chronology, compiled by Bob Hanson, Larry Goolsby, and Jim Langston, for the merger on December 31, 1959, as the Western Carolina Division.
New York Times, September 18, 1959, for the bridge-line description, the holding-company ownership, and the share exchange announced that day.
Official Guide of the Railways, December 1954 and December 1957, for the published bracket on the end of passenger service. The 1952 public timetable on this page still listed the trains.

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