Railroad Heritage

Railroad Heritage. Georgia Railroad. Georgia Railroad was located off Broad St, to the east of Foundry St. and lease factory space to the Hanna Manufacturing Baseball Bat Co., 1833 Georgia Railroad Co. is incorporated by a group of Athens citizens led by James Camak., 1841 39-mile Union Point to Athens branch is completed, connecting Athens to Augusta., 1864 Georgia Railroad is devastated by Sherman's Army and Civil War., 1890s Six-Mile Station (Winterville) is built to serve as a water and wood stop., 1967 Seaboard Coast Line gains control of Georgia Railroad., 1982 Seaboard is merged to form CSX Transportation, 1988 Service along the 37-mile branch from East Athens through Winterville to Union Point is discontinued., 1998 Service along the final section of the Union Point to Athens link is discontinued., (captions) , (Above): After completion of the trestles over Trail Creek and the North Oconee River in 1883, the Georgia Railroad depot was moved to downtown Athens to the area east of the Foundry Street warehouses and north of Broad Street. The Georgia Railroad depot complex owned and leased factory space to the Hanna Manufacturing Company (shown in the top image from a 1942 Hanna Baseball Bat Catalogue). Hanna was one of the leading baseball bat manufacturing companies in the United States from the 1920s to the early 1970s. The shipment of raw materials and finished products by rail were indispensable for their businesses. This building was destroyed by fire ca. 1985 and is the current site of the Athens Multimodal Transportation Center. (Inset): Vintage postcard of folks painting depicting the Wintervile Georgia Railroad train station, built in the late 1800s and restored in 2003. The locomotive in the painting was called the "Fairywestward.", (Below): 1866 Georgia Railroad freight bill and a 75 cent note from 1862., both from Athens, GA. The image of the train on both of these documents illustrates the importance of the railroads to the Athens economy in the mid-1800s., Circa 1830s engraving of an early Georgia Railroad train., 1879 Georgia Railroad freight bill for Childs, Nickerson Hardware Co. from Athens, GA, Early 1900s photo of train engineers.