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The Seaboard Air Line Railroad (SAL), which styled itself "The Route of Courteous Service," was an American railroad which existed from 1900 until 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime rival, to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (SCL). Predecessor railroads dated from the 1830s and reorganized extensively to rebuild after the American Civil War. The company was headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia, until 1958, when its main offices were relocated to Richmond, Virginia. The Seaboard Air Line Railway Building in Norfolk's historic Freemason District still stands and has been converted into apartments. At the end of 1925 SAL the main line ran from Richmond via Raleigh, North Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia to Jacksonville, Florida, a major interchange point for passenger trains bringing travelers to the Sunshine State. From Jacksonville, Seaboard rails continued to Tampa, St. Petersburg, West Palm Beach and Miami.
Other important Seaboard routes included a line from Jacksonville via Tallahassee to a connection with the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) at Chattahoochee, Florida, for through service to New Orleans; a line to Atlanta, Georgia, and Birmingham, Alabama, connecting with the main line at Hamlet, North Carolina; and a line from the main at Norlina, North Carolina, to Portsmouth, Virginia, the earliest route of what became the Seaboard.
In the first half of the 20th century, Seaboard, along with its main competitors Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, Florida East Coast Railway and Southern Railway, contributed greatly to the economic development of the Southeastern United States, and particularly to that of Florida. Its trains brought vacationers to Florida from the Northeast and carried southern timber, minerals and produce, especially Florida citrus crops, to the northern states.
Early 19th century
The complex corporate history of the Seaboard began on March 8, 1832, when its earliest predecessor, the Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad was chartered by the legislatures of Virginia and North Carolina to build a railroad from Portsmouth, Virginia, to the Roanoke River port of Weldon, North Carolina.
In 1846, after suffering financial difficulties, the Portsmouth and Roanoke RR was reorganized as the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad, known informally as the Seaboard Road.
Civil War and Reconstruction
The American Civil War devastated railroads, particularly in former Confederate territories including Virginia and North Carolina. After the war, Moncure Robinson and Alexander Boyd Andrews organized the Seaboard Inland Air Line to connect Georgia and South Carolina to Portsmouth, Virginia (in the Hampton Roads area across from Norfolk, Virginia).
Moncure Robinson's son John M. Robinson acquired financial control 1875. As a marketing tactic they were collectively known as the "Seaboard Air-Line System." The name initially had no legal authority, although that changed as Robinson continued to extend southward. The first known official use of "Seaboard Air Line" appeared when the system was pushing towards Atlanta.
The air line name "Straight as a plumb line": Seaboard Air Line Railway advertisement illustrating the "quickest train service via the shortest route" to Florida, 1902. In the days before air travel, air line was a common term for the shortest distance between two points: a straight line drawn through the air (or on a map), ignoring natural obstacles (i. e., "as the crow flies"). Hence, a number of 19th century railroads used air line in their titles to suggest that their routes were shorter than those of competing roads.
During a spate of interest in aviation shares on Wall Street following Charles A. Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, Seaboard Air Line shares actually attracted some investor curiosity because of the name's aviation-related connotations; only after noticing that Seaboard Air Line was actually a railroad did investors lose interest.
Late 19th century
The railroads' prosperous operations of the 1850s, hauling passengers as well as valuable cargoes of cotton, tobacco and produce from the Piedmont to the tidewater port of Portsmouth, were interrupted by the Civil War, during which bridges and tracks of both railroads were destroyed at various times by Union or Confederate troops.
Prosperity returned after the war, with the efficiently managed Seaboard Road showing a profit even during the Panic of 1873, and paying stockholders an annual dividend of 8 percent for many years. In 1871, the Raleigh and Gaston acquired the Raleigh and Augusta Air-Line Railroad, which, however, reached only to Hamlet, North Carolina. When the R&G and its subsidiary fell into financial straits in 1873, the Seaboard's president, John M. Robinson, acquired financial control of them, becoming president of all three railroads in 1875.
Map of the Seaboard Air-Line System in 1896, showing connecting routes prior to the 1900 amalgamation into a single corporation.
The Seaboard Air-Line System
By 1881, the Seaboard and Roanoke, the Raleigh and Gaston, and others were operating as a coordinated system under the Seaboard Air-Line System name for marketing purposes, combining the nicknames of the two principal roads.
During its heyday in the 1890s, the system prided itself on offering excellent passenger service between Atlanta and the northeast. A daily coach and Pullman train, the S.A.L. Express, ran from Atlanta to the Seaboard Road's depot and wharf at Portsmouth, where passengers could transfer to steamships for direct passage to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. The system's premier train, however, was the Atlanta Special, running in daily service between Atlanta and Washington, using the Atlantic Coast Line's tracks from Weldon to Richmond, and the tracks of the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac from Richmond to Washington.
Seaboard depot and hotel, about 1915, at the important junction of Hamlet, North Carolina, where two main SAL routes crossed. As important as the route to the major railroad hub of Atlanta was, access to Florida resorts and markets would be even more important to the railroad's success in years to come. In the last two decades of the 19th century, the pieces of the route to Florida began to fall into place. Between 1885 and 1887, the Palmetto Railroad, later reorganized as the Palmetto Railway, had built southward from Hamlet, North Carolina, on the Seaboard main line, to Cheraw, South Carolina. In 1895, the Seaboard took control of the Palmetto Railway and extended the tracks to Columbia.
Seaboard predecessors in Florida
In 1860, the Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad (FA&GC) completed construction of a line running west from Jacksonville, Florida, to Lake City, Florida. That same year, the Florida Railroad opened from Fernandina, just north of Jacksonville, southwest to Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast. In 1863, the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad (P&G) completed a line running east from Quincy, Florida, through Tallahassee to Lake City, where it connected with the FA&GC.
Seaboard depot and hotel
Early 20th century
Two early logos used in advertising by the Seaboard, from about 1900 and 1916, respectively. These foreshadow the design of the famous "Through the heart of the South" logo, displayed at the top of this article.
On April 14, 1900, the Seaboard Air Line Railway was incorporated, comprising 19 railroads in which it owned all or most of the capital stock. Williams was the first president of the new corporation, which advertised its north-south route as the "Florida-West India Short Line." James H. Dooley, veteran of several rail mergers in the South, helped organize the SAL and served as chairman of SAL's executive council.
On June 3, 1900, through service from New York to Tampa, Florida, was inaugurated, with trains operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad from New York to Washington, D.C.; by the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad from Washington to Richmond; and by the Seaboard from Richmond to Tampa, an arrangement that lasted until the creation of Amtrak in 1971.
Unfortunately, the new 2,600-mile railroad did not prosper as expected in its early years. However, along with most other U.S. railroads, the Seaboard was nationalized during the railroad crisis brought on by World War I and was run by the United States Railroad Administration from December 28, 1917, to March 1, 1920.
Warfield and the South Florida expansion
With an influx of tourists traveling to rapidly developing Florida, the Seaboard enjoyed a prosperous decade in the 1920s. Street side of the 1925 SAL passenger station in West Palm Beach, Florida, now used by both Amtrak and the Tri-Rail regional rail line.
The Great Depression and World War II
The railroad was in an unfortunate position due to being geographically sandwiched in the South between two well-to-do rivals, the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) and the Southern Railway. In addition, Warfield's expansion down the west coast of Florida was seen as an unnecessary extravagance due to the presence of the ACL in the same area. In December 1930, the Seaboard again entered bankruptcy following the collapse of the Florida land boom and the onset of the Great Depression. The United States District Court in Norfolk, Virginia—which would oversee the railroad for the next 14½ years—appointed Powell as a receiver.
With loans obtained from the federal government's Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the railroad set about modernizing its equipment with new steam freight locomotives and new and rebuilt passenger cars. In 1942, to cut expenses, the SAL abandoned a 27-mile section of its then only 15-year-old Fort Myers-Naples extension between South Fort Myers and Naples By aggressive marketing and technological innovations that drew travelers to the line, such as the highly popular Silver Meteor Streamliner, introduced in 1939, Seaboard managed to regain its financial footing. The economic boom of World War II also helped replenish the railroad's coffers. In 1944, the Silver Meteor alone turned a profit of over $8 million, nearly as much as the deficit of the whole railroad had been in the Depression year of 1933.
In May 1945, all of the Seaboard properties were sold under foreclosure at an auction sale In 1946, the railroad was reorganized as the Seaboard Air Line Railroad.
Later 20th century
Quick to recognize the cost savings of diesel power over steam in the postwar period, the Seaboard dieselized all of its mainline trains by 1953. In the same decade, the railroad installed CTC signaling across most of its system, generating further savings of time and money, as well as improved safety. However, like all American railroads, Seaboard saw a decline in revenues, especially in passenger traffic, from the 1950s into the 1960s, in the face of growing competition from airlines, trucking companies and the Interstate Highway System.
As a strategic move to reduce costs and counter the competition of airlines and trucking companies, merger with the parallel system of Seaboard's chief rival, Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) was first proposed in 1958, but was not approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission until 1967. On July 1 of that year, SAL and ACL merged to form Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (SCL).
On May 1, 1971, SCL turned over all its passenger operations to the newly formed Amtrak, which continued to operate the profitable Silver Meteor and Silver Star alongside a former Coast Line Streamliner, the Champion, while eliminating others.
By 1972, Seaboard Coast Line and its corporate relatives Louisville and Nashville, Georgia Railroad, West Point Route, and Clinchfield Railroad began advertising themselves as the Family Lines System, and applying the Family Lines logo to their rolling stock. However, the Family Lines name was merely a marketing strategy, and all the railroads remained separate legal and operating entities.
The Family Lines System and the Chessie System became subsidiaries of the newly created CSX Corporation on November 1, 1980, but continued to operate as separate railroads. The Family Lines name and logo were dropped when all of the Family Lines merged on December 29, 1982, to form the Seaboard System.
On July 1, 1986, the Seaboard System's name was changed to CSX Transportation. Subsequently, the Chessie System was merged into CSX Transportation on August 31, 1987.
Earliest predecessor: The Portsmouth and Roanoke Railroad (1832)
Successor: Amtrak (passengers), CSX (freight)
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