I live in Jonesboro on the Macon line. I recently began working in town in close proximity to the tracks, and have heard only one train in a month's time. Anyone know if there is a scheduled local south of the Ford plant, or if service is on an as-needed basis? Also, what frequency does NS use when running along this line?

Thanks, Andrew Durden

-- Andrew Durden (sa750@boone.net), October 29, 2001

Answers

Andrew,

I myself live in Jonesboro near the old CofG line. There is one local that runs Sunday through Thursday, G04G5. This job goes on duty at Griffin around 1000pm, and works its way northward to Morrow. Sometimes it will go as far as Forest Park yard and drop off cars for East Point. There's a Sherwin Williams in Morrow near Southlake that gets switched every night, along with some warehouses in the area. Atlas Roofing in Hampton gets switched every night also.

Up until recently, Norfolk Southern would occasionally run extras on the line so as not to further congest their already busy ex-Southern Atlanta-Macon line. These extras would usually be southbound grain trains and northbound empty auto racks for the Ford plant at Hapeville. Last year I saw a southbound grain train come through Jonesboro with four CSX units!! Unfortunately, NS has discontinued this practice due to slow ordering nearly the whole line with 10mph speed restrictions.

-- jared lane blocker (jlaneblock@hotmail.com), October 15, 2002.

Bear with me, I'm trying to piece together what information I've heard from others.

I think the local that runs to Griffin is G05 or GA05...I can't remember exactly. Usually the local only runs one way before the crew goes dead on the law because of the 10 mph restriction south of Forest Park Yard. Despite NS's neglect for the line, there are actually a suprising number of customers up and down the line. Of course there is the Morrow Industral Park, which I've seen switched quite often when I was working at Southlake, a concrete plant inbetween Morrow and Jonesboro that has a few rock hoppers parked nearby and a few warehouses around Hampton. I've flown up and down the line as far south as Forsyth, and it looks like there have actually been a couple of new leads built off of the main north of Griffin. I seem to remember at one time that there might have been a couple of small outfits just south of Jonesboro, but I could be wrong, you'd probably be able to answer that one yourself, I haven't lived in Jonesboro since 1993.

If you look around the Depot in Jonesboro, you'll notice that the old switch machine for the south end of the Jonesboro CTC siding is still laying in the grass there. That's right, up until about 88-89, the S- Line used to be CTC from Atlanta to Macon. I very vividly remeber the signals at the end of the siding, a 2 arm color light going north, and a dwarf and a 1 arm color light with doll arm going southbound. You can look closesly at the crossings through town and see where the siding had been taken up, I think the siding ended somewhere around Jonesboro High School.

Bart

-- Bart Youngblood (bart99gt@yahoo.com), October 05, 2002.