Southern line from Athens to Madison in Georgia

[troy12n]

Anyone have any info on the ex-Southern line from Athens to Madison (maybe elsewhere?)???

Appears to be abandoned years ago with track left in place. Track and ROW looks to not be used for at least 15-20 years, maybe more judging by the size of the trees growing up between the rails.

What's the story here? Why abandoned, why tracks left in place? why did NS apparently take the time to go put crossing ID markers on the grade crossings sometime in the past 10 years for a line so long out of service?

[lwjabo]

This is the old Central of Georgia line. At one time Southern had two lines into Athens. The Piedmont branch is still in place as far as I know. There was at one time a yard engine assigned to Athens. This was a CG crew out of Macon. I was told some years ago that the yard engine crews had senority only in Athens and Griffin. They were merged back in the early 70's with crews out of Macon.