Does anyone know how many trains daily Georgia Central runs in the Savannah and Macon areas? Around Vidalia and Lyons, their home office, they run a westbound in the afternoon and an eastbound in early evening, plus a local a few days a week to service a wood industry near Vidalia.
Savannah:
Except for local switching moves, any trains into and out of the GC's Savannah Yard would come through the Vidalia area.
Macon:
My recollection is that the GC had quite a bit of carloadings created by the Fullers Earth mines between Vidalia and Macon, with most of the mines served by the GC being located not too far from Macon. I imagine that most of these carloadings are interchanged at Macon, but some must be interchanged at Savannah with CSX.
Could additional trains come through during night-time hours? The GC has to be making $ with freight being transported somewhere on their system. The GC's marketing strategy at the get-go was to short-haul the NS between Macon and Savannah. The west end connection with the Heart of Georgia is extremely minimal. And, there are no other connections, except at McRae-Helena with NS. On recent trips through town, it didn't appear to be any interchange traffic.
Due to GC's railroad line configurations, it would seem that most of the GC's traffic must come through Vidalia, or be the locally-generated loadings along the Macon route, as CSX didn't give the GC much opportunities for access to locally-generated traffic in the Savannah area when CSX sold the line to GC.
My bet is on additional night-time trains between Macon and Savannah.
Take care and best wishes!
ACLfan