rty forming a link with the Greensboro line, they
created a through route from Richmond to Charlotte. By 1874 they had
built the road southward to Atlanta, Georgia, and had thus formed
the first continuous route from Richmond to that city. Because of the
extreme disorder and depression in the South during the years after the
Civil War the line did not prosper and was sold under foreclosure
about 1875. But the company was reorganized in 1878 and acquired the
Charlotte, Columbia and Augusta, thus extending its lines into the heart
of South Carolina and tapping a rich territory. During these early years
the Pennsylvania Railroad interests, which still held control, supplied
the funds necessary for making improvements.

At the same time that the Richmond and Danville was linking up
the commercial centers of the southern Atlantic seaboard, another
system--known as the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia--was being
built up in the Appalachian Mountains to the west. This property and its
predecessors had to some extent been state-owned enterprises at first,
but in 1870 the Pennsylvania Railroad interests acquired control. A
holding company called the Southern Railway Securities Company was now
formed for the purpose of controlling all the Pennsylvania Railroad
interests south of Washington. Besides the properties mentioned,
this Securities Company soon obtained several other Atlantic seaboard
properties extending from Richmond to Charleston, and also the Memphis
and Charleston Railroad, running from Memphis to Chattanooga.

Thus at this early day a considerable railroad system had been welded
together in the South, reaching many points of importance and forming
direct connection at Washington with the northern properties of the
Pennsylvania system. Had this experiment been successful, we would
perhaps today reckon the great Southern Railway system as part of the
Pennsylvania group. But the outcome was disappointing; the roads did not
prosper; and soon the poorer sections began to default. The Pennsylvania
then disposed of its interests and left the roads to shift for
themselves.

The East Tennessee was the best of these minor lines, and in 1877
it began to acquire others extending through the South. Soon it had
penetrated the heart of Alabama, reaching what is today known as the
Birmingham district. Additional extensions were made to Macon and Rome,
Georgia, and on the north an alliance was arranged with the Norfolk and
We