In steam days the line was assigned ACL’s group of 20 2-10-2 locomotives, whose low drivers came in handy for getting drag freights over the hilly terrain. Passenger trains were handled by ACL’s P-5 series Pacifics, while local freights usually drew ten-wheelers and 2-8-2s. Frequent mixed trains and way freights were seen on the route to serve the branches to Luverne, Elba, and Abbeville.

Until recent decades the Montgomery line was the gateway for several important Chicago-Florida trains, including heavyweight flyers like the Florida Arrow, which arrived from the north on the Louisville & Nashville. But the line’s most famous passenger train was the South Wind, a streamliner owned by the Pennsylvania and inaugurated in 1940. The train prospered in the 1940s and 1950s, and grew into a long train equipped with sleepers and a dining and lounge car. But passenger deficits in the 1960s led to the takeover of private passenger trains by Amtrak in 1971. Amtrak kept the South Wind as its only Chicago-Florida train (the other had been Illinois Central’s City of Miami), but soon renamed it the Floridian. However, a combination of paltry funding for Amtrak, several severe winters, and poor track over the train’s Penn Central route north of Louisville led to the Floridian’s demise in 1979.

In 1967 the ACL was merged with the Seaboard Air Line to form the Seaboard Coast Line. Traffic remained good, although the Montgomery line played second in Midwestern traffic to ACL’s former Atlanta, Birmingham & Coast (AB&C) route between Waycross,Ga.and Birmingham. Additional consolidations led to the Family Lines System, Seaboard System, and finally CSX in 1986. Today the line remains an important freight carrier, and is particularly useful as an alternate Midwestern route to the ex-AB&C line or former L&N line north of Atlanta.

Larry Goolsby grew up in Woodland, Ga., on the Atlantic Coast Line’s Western Division (the former Atlanta, Birmingham & Coast Railroad). He is a charter member of the Atlantic Coast Line & Seaboard Air Line Railroads Historical Society and serves as the group’s Secretary-Treasurer. His ACL research has led to numerous articles for the ACL & SAL HS magazine, Lines South. He is the author of two books published by TLC Publishing, Atlantic Coast Line Passenger Service - The Postwar Years and The Atlanta, Birmingham & Coast Railroad. He currently lives in Kensington, Maryland. For information on ordering his book, or on joining the ACL & SAL HS, contact the group at P. O. Box 325, Valrico, FL 33595-0325, or on the web at http://www.aclsal.org.