The Georgia Power Company ran a commuter line from Marietta northwest of Atlanta into town alongside GA Hwy 3 from early in the 20th century until 1947, the year before I was born, when Atlanta Mayor William B. Hartsfield ran them out of town to make Atlanta safe for cars. Both my mother and my mother-in-law used to ride it during the war years and before. The right of way remained pretty much intact until relatively few years ago when the state decided that the traffic jam was not wide enough and widened the road from two to five lanes. I met a Cobb County (Marietta) traffic engineer who told me he had been assigned to get the necessary easements. CSX, at first, denied owning the ROW, but after sending the man on a wild goose chase, finally realized it did, in fact, own the land and gave it up. How much better it would have been if the land had been retracked because the traffic builds from way, way out and is awful. I used to work with a woman who had to put up with it and could take one and a half hours to get to work. Instead of putting up a Rails to Trails project called the Silver Comet Trail, it would have been better utilized as an interurban route. The Seaboard Air Line's Silver Comet passenger train used to use a route to Birmingham which was turned into a walker and jogger waste. But I'm told by those in the know that the ROW is 300 feet wide and that if high speed rail ever gets funded in GA, this is the route it will take to Birmingham, AL.
The Georgia DOT and Norfolk Southern are talking about a southside Atlanta rail line to cut down the traffic from that side.
Jock Ellis
The Georgia DOT and Norfolk Southern are talking about a southside Atlanta rail line to cut down the traffic from that side.
Jock Ellis
