Railroad Story 

The Georgia Road is a lifelong concept stretching over the last 25 years. My influences are the great prototype freelance railroads such as the V&O, UB, AM and OS. I am also a student of railroad history, particularly the events from the 1980s until today that define what modern railroading encompasses. As I documented various changes and practices in the prototype over the years, I worked to incorporate them into the Georgia Road concept. As you can imagine, with so many years in development, the Georgia Road concept has become its own world, tied closely to the prototype.

I spent the last two years consolidating “everything Georgia Road” on a personal website (best viewed in Desktop or Laptop mode). Frustrations over the Meta side of Facebook made my decade old Facebook page hard to organize and maintain all the information, drawings and narrative articles I wanted. While still a work in progress, the website is a compendium of my ideas, designs and concepts arranged in a pseudo-corporate site format.

The concept of the Georgia Road is based on a modern bend on the rejected Central of Georgia-GM&O merger of the 1960s-70s era. The concept sees the CofGA spun off by NS in the 1990s, much like it did in reality with the W&LE. It would buy the FEC from

St. Joe Paper when it was put up for sale in the 1990s, rather than FEC actually going to RailAmerica interests. Georgia Road would place a very early emphasis on expanding the growing east-west land-bridge and domestic containerization movement in the 1990s into the early 2000s. Early agreements with connecting partner railroads would garner the APL/APC stack train business and the establishment of the first inland port facility in Atlanta, GA. The business was branded under the Eagle Flyer Land Bridge Service operating under Georgia Road’s QuickSilver Intermodal Service (designed similar to CSX-SeaLand and NS Triple Crown Service in the early 1990s). This traffic would generate cashflow, allowing further expansions into the mid-2000s.

Georgia Road shocked the status quo of the Southeastern Railroad scene in the late 1990s by taking a page from the David vs. Goliath transaction of Rio Grande Industries purchase of Southern Pacific. Georgia Road reached out and purchased the IC network after the failed KCS-IC merger attempt. This expanded the Deep South Regional to a large Class One operation at the time. 

Southern Company cogeneration plants using Powder River Coal in the Deep South set the stage for the next acquisition. Georgia Road bought the DME and completed the Powder River Coal Extension which Georgia Road used to gain full control of these trains from mine to generator, running from Wyoming into Georgia, Alabama and Florida. While coal in general was slowing, Southern Company still kept dozens of trainsets working to and from the Powder River Basin. Georgia Road could offer end to end service, where it historically traded these trains in Memphis with UP or BNSF. The IC and DME pushed the Georgia Road westward, increasing coal revenue and allowing expansion of growing intermodal operations in the Southeast, fueled by foreign OEM automakers centered around the Georgia Road.

The NAFTA agreements opened Mexican and Canadian markets and Georgia Road was quick to expand once again by purchasing controlling interest after the privatization of NdeM. Rio Pacifico Lines (RIO) was formed as a Georgia Road-Grupo joint venture aimed at moving manufactured goods from Mexico to the USA and Canada, while taking agriculture and goods to Mexican markets. Georgia Road pieced together connections to Dallas and San Angelo, TX via the Meridian Speedway in exchange for Meridian Speedway access to Birmingham and Atlanta intermodal terminals. Georgia Road and RIO then acquired branch and secondary trackage from Dallas to San Angelo along with the old South Orient line to Presidio, TX. This line from Dallas to Presidio would be called the Texas Eastern (TXE), jointly operated by Georgia Road and Rio Pacifico. This is the routing that became the MexXpress Service connecting Mexico manufacturing areas of Guadalajara, Mexico City and the Jalisco region between them to customers in the USA and Canada.

Website

www.georgiaroadtransportation.com