# Silver Comet trail



## Bill Haithcoat (May 14, 2009)

There is a lot in the local ATL news just now about a murder some time back on the Silver Comet trail. Sometimes the news tries to explain that the name has something to do with trains but they usually do not get it any closer than that. It is now a hiking and cycling trail, very popular.Usually in the news for more pleasant reasons.

It refers to abandoned tracks of the Seaboard Railroad between Atlanta and Birmingham. The primary, fastest and finest train on that route was the Silver Comet, sister to the Silver Meteor and the Silver Star.The Silver Comet was discontinued about 1969. before Amtrak.The Comet went from NYC,WAS,Richmond to Atl and BHM, whereas the other two, as is well known went and still go from NYC to Florida points.

The Silver Meteor was put into operation in 1939. It was called "silver'" because it was one of the earlier stainless steel American streamliners. "Meteor", I guess,to suggest something speeding across the sky or in this case, the railroads.Stainless steel was a novely then, not the norm it is today. Of course the other two silver trains,begun in 1947, were so named for the same reasons.

The Seaboard would be CSX today. their freights still operate, about a few yards from my home. It was in competition with the Southern, which operated the Crescent and various other trains. Today of course that is Norfolk Southern.

Just as the Southern trains from NYC to ATL and NOL had a suburban station (the one which today is used as a regular station) the Seaboard also had a suburban stop. It was at Emory University, still there, I think, as a campus operated resaurant last I heard.


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## Carter (May 16, 2009)

Bill Haithcoat said:


> The Silver Meteor was put into operation in 1939. It was called "silver'" because it was one of the earlier stainless steel American streamliners. "Meteor", I guess,to suggest something speeding across the sky or in this case, the railroads.Stainless steel was a novely then, not the norm it is today. Of course the other two silver trains,begun in 1947, were so named for the same reasons.


Bill, is that one of the trains they ran with a 4-8-4 Northern, except that they called it a 'Dixie' because even 70 years after the (ahem) Unpleasantness they still couldn't bear anything too Yankee?


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## Bill Haithcoat (May 16, 2009)

Carter said:


> Bill Haithcoat said:
> 
> 
> > The Silver Meteor was put into operation in 1939. It was called "silver'" because it was one of the earlier stainless steel American streamliners. "Meteor", I guess,to suggest something speeding across the sky or in this case, the railroads.Stainless steel was a novely then, not the norm it is today. Of course the other two silver trains,begun in 1947, were so named for the same reasons.
> ...


No, the Silver Comet was diesel from the beginning in 1947.

I am not a locomotive expert but I believe the railroad you are talking about was the Nashville Chattanooga and St. Louis RR (absorbed by Louisville and Nashville in 1957). It was the Nashville to Atlanta portion of a Chicago to Miami line, known as the Dixie Line, some connection to the old Dixie Highway.

Many of the trains had Dixie in their name, like Dixie Flagler, Dixie Flyer, Dixie Limited, Dixieland,etc.

The steamers were gone before I was old enough to remember. Of course a different loco would handle each train over the five railroads involved in getting from Chicago to Miami.

These were:

Chicago to Evansville Chiicago & Eastern Illinois

Evansville to Nashvilel Louisville and Nashville

Nashville to Atlanta Nashville Chattanooga and St. Louis

Atlanta to Jacksonville Atlantic Coast Line

Jacksonville to Miami Florida East Coast


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## Carter (May 16, 2009)

So, they'd change motive power every time the carriages changed lines?

In my current line of work, I'm pretty sure we'd call that a process with multiple potential failure modes. But then, I guess the process by which the rail network was built wasn't actually designed for maximum efficiency.


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## Bill Haithcoat (May 16, 2009)

Carter said:


> So, they'd change motive power every time the carriages changed lines?
> In my current line of work, I'm pretty sure we'd call that a process with multiple potential failure modes. But then, I guess the process by which the rail network was built wasn't actually designed for maximum efficiency.



Yes, before 1971, when Amtrak was put into place, many,many trains all around the country were called interline trains. Beng operated by more than one railroad was extremely common.

Typically, each railroad would contribute its share of equipment for the train, based on mileage.

Typically the locomotive would change each time the train moved from one company to the other.

Let us just give a very simple idea. Say a hypothetical train operated a trip that was 700 miles long on the ABC railroad. Then for 300 miles it was run by the XYZ line. Say the train had ten cars. Then the ABC line would give it seven cars, the XYZ would give it three.

If the railroads involved had different color schemes, then sometimes they would agree to come up with a common color scheme for an interline train. Then sometimes they did not. The sometimes they would have a common color scheme the first years of operation but that would eventually sort of die out.

I can see how the locomotive thing might seem inefficient. But keep in mind a given route in the USA back then often had several trains a day instead of one train a day so common now. That meant when the loco was removed from its train, it did not necessarily have to wait for the SAME train to return.

For example: using the railroads listed in the earlier post. Say, take the Dixie Flagler from Chicago to the Evansville portion of its journey to Miami. When it got to Evansvile, the engine was removed,yes. But it did not have to wait till the northbound Dixie Flagler returned back to Chicago. Instead it could go back on the Dixie Flyer or whatever train came up next.

None of this has any application today. That is because Amtrak is a nationwide corporation,instead of over 100 private passenger/freight railroads as in the past.The only way to carry passengers a long distance in the past was for the railroads to cooprate as shown above.

Some railroads in the pre Amtrak era were very large and almost self contained,did not need to interline too much with others. The Santa Fe and the New York Central come to mind. But even they were not completely unrelated to other lines.


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## MrFSS (May 17, 2009)

Bill - they didn't always change motive power at the boundary of one RR and the next. Here are ACL engines pulling the Southwind out of Chicago Union Station in the 50's. I took this from Roosevelt Rd and remember to this day that I was shocked to see those non-PRR engines on an all PRR train.


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## Bill Haithcoat (May 17, 2009)

MrFSS said:


> Bill - they didn't always change motive power at the boundary of one RR and the next. Here are ACL engines pulling the Southwind out of Chicago Union Station in the 50's. I took this from Roosevelt Rd and remember to this day that I was shocked to see those non-PRR engines on an all PRR train.





Yep, the South Wind was one of the best known exceptions to everything I said above. It was, as you note, all PRR equipment from 1940 until the mid 50's.And usually had either all PRR locos or all ACL locos all the way from CHI to MIA.

Tom, I know you saw the SW tons of times.

It was operated as you know this way:

Chicago to Louisville Pennsylvania RR

Louisville to Montgomery Louisville and Nashville RR

Montgomery to Jacksonville Atlantic Coast Liine RR

Jacksonville to Miami Florida East Coast RR

Toward the end of 1957 two things happened which caused the South Wind to get an influx of unpainted silver stainless steel cars. These were, 1. the demise of the Dixieland(formerly Dixie Flagler),2.the demise of the west coast section of the Southland, which had carried through sleepers from Chicago and Detroit to FLorida West Coast.It may have started to get silver cars before that,not sure.

These caused the South Wind and also the City of Miami to forever after be every other day trains,not every third day,etc. The two trains now had through cars from Chicago to St. Pete and from Chicago to Tampa/Sarasota, as well as CHI to MIA.

Thus the South Wind was spiffied up with the cars from the Dixieland (which were only three years old) from CHI to MIA as well as to west coast points. By that time L&N sometimes ran some blue coaches on the South Wind.And of course sometimes cars were borrowed from other roads during the winter.

Thus, the South Wind eventually lost its all red PRR coloration. However, so far as I know, it continued the practice of the same locos carrying it all the way from CHI to MIA.

I never knew why.


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## Guest (May 17, 2009)

Carter said:


> Bill Haithcoat said:
> 
> 
> > The Silver Meteor was put into operation in 1939. It was called "silver'" because it was one of the earlier stainless steel American streamliners. "Meteor", I guess,to suggest something speeding across the sky or in this case, the railroads.Stainless steel was a novely then, not the norm it is today. Of course the other two silver trains,begun in 1947, were so named for the same reasons.
> ...


The Dixies were definitely the NC&StL 4-8-4's. First train I ever rode was the City of Memphis between Memphis and Jackson TN behind one of these things. Sadly, not only is the train long gone, so is the railroad line, itself. Even where it was can be hard to find over much of its route. We make no apologies for the name.


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## Bill Haithcoat (May 18, 2009)

Guest said:


> Carter said:
> 
> 
> > Bill Haithcoat said:
> ...



Did you know the City of Memphis observation car can be found at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga. Also there is a pine sleeper there from the Georgian, NC&STL Chickamauga Pine.


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