L&N’s acquisition of both the A&F and S&NA created a prime trunk route from the Ohio Valley through Montgomery to the Gulf Coast, enabling the road after 1880 to command a predominate share of north-south export and mineral freight traffic as well as passenger traffic. The Pan-American and Azalean were crack passenger trains which for years plied L&N’s Cincinnati-New Orleans mainline; the Humming Bird streamliner joined them in 1946.

With the Western Railway of Alabama (WofA), companion West Point Route lines and the Southern Railway, L&N participated in the handling of the famed Crescent Limited and other "Washington-Sunset Route" trains running between the Northeast and New Orleans. A significant volume of through freight also moved over that same route and was interchanged between L&N and the WofA at Montgomery; beginning in the late 1960’s, the two roads cooperated in several expedited Atlanta-New Orleans run-through freights.

Also, L&N and owner Atlantic Coast Line, from the early 1900’s on, helped move much Midwest-Florida vacation travel through Montgomery on such well-remembered trains as the Florida Arrow and South Wind. Indeed, the Floridian, an Amtrak continuation of that Chicago-Florida service in the 1970’s, became the city’s last passenger train until restoration of the Birmingham-Mobile Gulf Breeze in 1989. This train, too, was however terminated in 1994.