The Alabama, Tennessee and Northern Railroad was a

short line railroad :''Short Line is also one of the four railroads in the American version of the popular board game Monopoly, named after the Shore Fast Line, an interurban streetcar line.'' A shortline railroad is a small or mid-sized railroad company that opera ...

which operated in the state of

Alabama (We dare defend our rights) , anthem = " Alabama" , image_map = Alabama in United States.svg , seat = Montgomery , LargestCity = Huntsville , LargestCounty = Baldwin County , LargestMetro = Greater Birmingham , area_total_km2 = 135,7 ...

. The company grew from an acquisition of an existing logging railroad in 1897, and merged with the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway (the "Frisco") in 1971. The company was also known as the "Port of Mobile Route."

History

John Taylor Cochrane acquired the Seaboard Railroad, a 6-year-old 33-mile narrow-gauge logging line, in a foreclosure sale in 1897. Separately, Cochrane was approached by the citizens of

Carrollton, Alabama Carrollton is a city in and the county seat of Pickens County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 1,019, up from 987 in 2000. The Pickens County Courthouse in the center of Carrollton was erected in 1877. The first c ...

to build a short-line connecting railroad for their town. It seems that in 1897, the

Mobile and Ohio Railroad The Mobile and Ohio Railroad was a railroad in the Southern U.S. The M&O was chartered in January and February 1848 by the states of Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. It was planned to span the distance between the seaport of Mob ...

chose to route through

Pickens County, Alabama Pickens County is a county located on the west central border of the U.S. state of Alabama. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,123. Its county seat is Carrollton, located in the center of the county. It is a prohibition, or dry count ...

by way of the town of

Reform, Alabama Reform is a city in Pickens County, Alabama, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 1,702, down from 1,978 in 2000. It is located approximately halfway between Columbus, Mississippi and Tuscaloosa on U.S. Route 82. History Sparse ...

— rather than the county seat of Carrollton — and the town needed to connect to Reform. Thus the Carrollton Short Line Railway was chartered, and built in 1900. Through mergers, acquisition of trackage rights, and the building and reconstruction of track, these two railroads eventually joined under the name of the Alabama, Tennessee and Northern Railroad, and the line was completed all the way from Reform to the port of

Mobile, Alabama Mobile ( , ) is a city and the county seat of Mobile County, Alabama, United States. The population within the city limits was 187,041 at the 2020 census, down from 195,111 at the 2010 census. It is the fourth-most-populous city in Alabama ...

. By 1948, the Frisco had purchased controlling interest, and operated it as a separate entity until 1971, when the line was absorbed into the parent company. In 1925, ATN reported 15 million ton-miles of revenue freight on 187 miles of line; in 1967, 543 million ton-miles on 214 route-miles. In 1950, under the auspices of the ATN, the Frisco began freight service to and from, and on Blakeley and

Pinto Island Pinto Island is an island in the U.S. state of Alabama, within the city limits of Mobile. Located on the northwestern coast of Mobile Bay, it is bounded on the west by the Mobile River, on the south by Mobile Bay, on the east by the Spanish Riv ...

s by way of two

car float A railroad car float or rail barge is a specialised form of lighter with railway tracks mounted on its deck used to move rolling stock across water obstacles, or to locations they could not otherwise go. An unpowered barge, it is towed by a t ...

s across the

Mobile River The Mobile River is located in southern Alabama in the United States. Formed out of the confluence of the Tombigbee and Alabama rivers, the approximately river drains an area of of Alabama, with a watershed extending into Mississippi, Georg ...

. The service was continued after the SLSF was merged into the

Burlington Northern Railroad The Burlington Northern Railroad was a United States-based railroad company formed from a merger of four major U.S. railroads. Burlington Northern operated between 1970 and 1996. Its historical lineage begins in the earliest days of railroadi ...

, until about 1994.

References

* * * Defunct Alabama railroads Former Class I railroads in the United States Predecessors of the St. Louis–San Francisco Railway Railway companies established in 1897 Railway companies disestablished in 1971 1897 establishments in Alabama 1971 disestablishments in Alabama {{Alabama-stub