Georgia Central Railway (Genesee & Wyoming)

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

You may be right about nighttime trains ACL. I know they evening time eastbound I see come through Vidalia stops at the GC shops in Lyons, but Im not sure when it leaves. I'm sure there has to be a "Macon local" to seve the kaolin mines at Dry Branch, between Macon and Dublin.

GC no longer owns the connection at McRae with NS, as everything from Vidlia to Mahrt, AL is state owned but leased to HOG. HOG rarely uses the line from McRae to Vidalia, except for occasional SAM Shortline specials, of which there where three last year. HOG brought one freight car last year to Vidalia for GC for some reason. HOG has been trying to develop business with a sand mine along the Vidalia-McRae portion, but no luck as yet.

Can't comment on train counts, but they have customers all over. Some in Vidalia and Dublin, plus the others you mentioned.

CSX has locked them out of Savannah for the most part. They cannot access the port at all.
That new Daimler Chrysler Plant would of been huge for them. Too bad those crazy germans lost all that money and called the whole thing off.
The state was going to put alot into that site, building a whole new rail yard for the plant off the GC mainline.

The HOG uses that interchange in Helena with NS, but it is very very minimal. They are also storing cars out there in places. HOG is trying to gain more business on the east end of the line like Ashley is saying. Even so I don't know if they will use the GC connection since most traffic is bound to end up on CSX or NS at some point.

I know they have SP newsprint in Dublin, do you know what else they have in Dublin? Also, do they have a Dublin based switcher? I tried to find the the Dublin yard once, but couldn't find any trace of it. Not sure there even is a yard...

Ashley2771: I've got to confess that I have never been to Dublin. Somehow, I've been almost everywhere around the area, but not in the City! Ok, now that my confession is over, I searched some databases for some info on a railroad yard in Dublin. A summary is as follows:

> The MD&S had a depot in Dublin, but it is no longer in existence, based on info in the Georgia Railroad Stations website;

> Using Topozone.com, a topographic map of the City shows a jointly used yard by GC and NS to be located on the south side of the downtown business district. Using the County Courthouse square in downtown as a referenced start point, proceed 4 blocks south on Jefferson Street, and you should see the yard (or, what isn't left of it!). The yard extends/extended about the length of about 5 city blocks, in a slightly NE - SW direction. Several streets cross portions of the yard and other streets parallel it on both sides.

[Topozone is a great source for getting info on an area prior to on-the-ground searches! Go to the topozone.com website, type in Dublin, GA; when your screen displays a response, click on the blue Dublin; pick out your map size, scale, etc. and click the "Update Map" bar; then use your mouse pad as a target cursor to navigate your direction of movements in wherever directions that you want to go. Just position the mouse pad where you want to go, and click! It's a great way to check out places, or to follow the routes of railroads, both existing and abandoned!]

> Terraserver.com is a very good source of aerial photographs of whatever coverage and scale that you desire. The effective use of this database requires some knowledge of the geography of an area. Unfortunately, the aerial photo clarity in the Dublin area is not too good, but 1993 dated aerial photos confirm the existence of the above-discussed yard.

I've got a hunch that there is some form of a yard still in existence, and maybe even a locomotive posted in Dublin for local work.

Good luck and best wishes!

ACLfan

Do any of you know if GC has divisions or subdivisions and if so what they are?

Does anyone have a current GC roster? Last I recall, the road had purchased a bunch of ex-SOU U23B high-hoods, and were replacing all the U30Bs and U33Bs.

Are any of the 30s or 33s still around, or have they all been scrapped?

The last GC locomotive roster that I've seen was dated early 2004, and listed 1 U30B (#1007) and 1 U33B (#1012), along with 18 U23B units from NS.


ACLfan

Based on what I've seen them running, that is correct. No new locos in the neighborhood for a while....

ACLfan wrote:The last GC locomotive roster that I've seen was dated early 2004, and listed 1 U30B (#1007) and 1 U33B (#1012), along with 18 U23B units from NS.

yep, a bunch of worn out ex-NS junk

I just hired out with CSX earlier this year and have been at Southover yard in Savannah for 2 weeks now. From what I've heard Georgia Central has picked up the business of some local industries from us. I've seen them at least once a day while I've been on 1st shift dropping off some cars they picked up from local industries. I think they do a pickup at the docks and drop it off with us, but I'm not sure.

I didn't know Georgia Central was in Southover Yard. They are located up on the north end of Savannah Yard, near the I-16 overpass. GC has their own small yard. I-516 goes over their tracks/yard just north of the I-16 interchange. The have to get clearance from CSX to get on their port track (connects SAV Yard to Port area), then to cross their mainline near the enterance to SAV Yard.

So I thought they just interchanged with CSX in SAV yard. The new Riceboro Southern and Golden Isle Terminal have trackage rights to reach Southover Yard to do their switching. But I didn't know GC would come down there. That is a good 4mile run on CSX's Mainline to reach Southover.

Hi there, Tom from NYC here. does any one have any current pictures of this railroad? Does any one know how many miles this railroad uses? I would like to try and get down to see the GC one day. Thank You to whom ever replies.

http://railga.com/gc.html

Above is a link with some background information. You could also check the state DOT web-site (I don't have the link handy). I believe they have an rail link off of that, one where you can request free maps and find info on traffic. I did that a while ago, but not sure where I have it. Also search GA passenger rail, that might give you some good background info.