Remembering Seaboard Air Line freight trains

Diesel fan’s delight

Seaboard train 84 departs Montgomery, Alabama, in August 1959 with a remarkable consist of first-generation diesels: a Baldwin “Centipede,” an EMD F3A, an Alco FA1, and two Alco RS3s!

David W. Salter

The Courier in northwest Georgia

Seaboard 2-10-2 2492 wheels time freight 82, the Courier, east between Cedartown and Rockmart, Georgia, on March 20, 1948.

David W. Salter

Score: Alco 6, EMD 1

At Wildwood, Florida, on Independence Day 1965, two new Alco C420s team up with three Alco RS3s, an EMD GP7, and an Alco FA on a 111-car Seaboard freight bound for Jacksonville.

Keith E. Ardinger

Set-off at Norlina

Seaboard 2-8-2 319, fronting the “Shorthaul 97” freight, gets ready to set off cars at Norlina, a few miles south of the Virginia-North Carolina line, in the 1940s.

Wiley M. Bryan

Decapod doubleheader

Two Seaboard 2-10-0s — class D-3 No. 533 (Baldwin, 1930) and class D “Russian Decapod” No. 502 (Richmond, 1918) — smokily power freight train 82, the Alaga, east at Penia, Georgia, on September 30, 1947.

David W. Salter

Modern power for a piggyback hotshot

An EMD GP35, a GP30, and two Alco C420s whisk piggybacker TT-23 south at Hamlet, North Carolina, in March 1966.

J. David Ingles

Local freight

Fireman and head brakeman eye the photographer from the cab of elderly (Baldwin, 1906) Consolidation No. 920 near Seville, Georgia, on the Seaboard’s Alabama Division on April 24, 1947. The 2-8-0 was built for the Georgia, Florida & Alabama, acquired by SAL in 1928.

David W. Salter

Citrus-scheme FT set

Locomotive 4000, the first of Seaboard’s 22 FTA-B sets, passes the Emory University campus in Atlanta with a freight train.

Leonard A. McLean

Geep and F units

GP9 No. 1796 teams up with an FTA-B set and two F3As on Seaboard train 85, the Merchandiser, at Rockmart, Georgia, in March 1960.

David W. Salter

E units on freight

E7A 3022 and an E7B lead three GP9s on the head end of Seaboard No. 75, departing Raleigh in 1959.

Wiley M. Bryan