The South Georgia Railway Company / Live Oak, Perry & Gulf Railroad Company

By Russell Tedder

In the post World War II economy shortlines gradually ceased to be the economic lifeline of the communities that once depended on them for all of their passenger, freight, mail and express service needs. Numerous shortlines and lumber roads struggled to stay alive and many have long since disappeared from railroad maps.

Southern Railway, under the leadership of D. W. Brosnan, believed some of these roads should be preserved for industrial expansion expected as part of the strong postwar growth in Southern's territory.

Among the first shortlines to be acquired under Brosnan's philosophy were the Live Oak Perry & Gulf Railroad and the South Georgia Railway. The two North Florida and South Georgia lumber roads were acquired on September 16, 1954 as subsidiaries of the GS&F. The GS&F had been dubbed the "Suwannee River Route" from its earliest days, but the LOP&G also carried the banner of the "Suwannee River Route" from 1910 until the early 1930s.

The South Georgia and LOP&G were launched by two sets of brothers who built large lumber empires in South Georgia and North Florida beginning late in the nineteenth century. The availability of large tracts of virgin timberland attracted the lumbermen to the area. The hub of the burgeoning sawmill and logging development was the fledgling town of Perry, the county seat of Taylor County, Florida which grew from a population of 200 in 1896 to one of the major lumber manufacturing centers in the country at the beginning of World War I.

The South Georgia in 1904 and the LOP&G in 1906 were the second and third roads that built into this primitive and uncharted area. They were preceded by the Florida Railway and followed by the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line. Of the five railroads, only the original 77 miles of the South Georgia and five miles of the LOP&G survive today.

South Georgia

About 1895, the brothers James W. and Zenas W. Oglesby established the Oglesby Lumber & Manufacturing Company at Heartpine, Ga., three miles south of Adel, Ga. on the newly opened GS&F. They bought large tracts of timberland and built 25 miles of tram roads, mostly to the south toward Quitman, Ga. The South Georgia R. R. was chartered on March 6, 1896 and opened between Heartpine and Quitman on February 2, 1897. It was opened from Quitman to Greenville, Fla. in 1901 and to Perry in 1904. That same year a four-mile line relocation changed the northern terminus from Heartpine to Adel and the Oglesby's moved their sawmill to Quitman where it was re-established as the Interstate Lumber Company.

The line was quite busy and prosperous until the stock market crash in 1929. Twice daily passenger trains were operated between Adel and Hampton Springs, Fla., after James W. Oglesby extended the road five miles from Perry to Hampton Springs where he had developed the resort Hotel Hampton in 1910. Mixed trains served the local freight and passenger needs while log trains kept the many sawmills and smaller "pepperbox" mills up and down the line supplied with timber. It was said in the early days that South Georgia engineers were never out of sight of the smokestack of a sawmill.

The financial condition of the road began to deteriorate after the Great Depression hit. The line from Perry to Hampton Springs was abandoned in 1931. By this time, service had dwindled to the proverbial mixed train daily between Adel and Perry plus some log train extras. A new Kalamazoo Railbus, M-100, was bought in 1940 and used regularly on Trains Nos. 1 and 2 until 1956 when passenger service was discontinued.

Over the years the South Georgia had been courted by many suitors. None were successful until control of the road was obtained in 1947 by the Brooks-Scanlon Corporation, which already owned the LOP&G and a large sawmill at Foley, Fla.

LOP&G

The forerunner of the LOP&G was a logging railroad built by the brothers Thomas D. and Robert L. Dowling to haul logs from Dowling Park, Fla., to R. L. Dowling's sawmill at Live Oak, Fla. Known as the R. L. Dowling Short Line, by 1898 the road had five locomotives and 15 miles of track. The Dowlings incorporated the Live Oak & Perry Railway Company in 1903 to buy and extend the logging road to Perry. By 1905 the fledgling road had been extended a total of 31 miles from Live Oak.

Following organization of the Dowling Lumber Company, which constructed a large sawmill at Dowling Park, a consortium of lumbermen headed by Thomas Dowling reincorporated the road in 1905 as the Live Oak, Perry & Gulf Railroad Company. The stated purpose was to extend the line east to Jacksonville, Fla. and west to St. Marks, Fla., a distance of 165 miles across the state of Florida from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.

By February 1906 the mainline was completed to Perry and Hampton Springs. In April of the same year a 14-mile branch was opened from Mayo Junction, Fla., down the west side of the Suwannee River through Mayo to Alton, Fla., site of another large sawmill owned by the Dowlings.

In failing health, Thomas Dowling sold the lumber and railroad interests and several hundred thousand acres of timberland in 1910 to Richard W. Sears, the retired founder of Sears, Roebuck & Company, who changed the name of the business to Standard Lumber Company. Besides existing mills at Alton and Dowling Park, Sears built a sawmill at Hampton Springs and in 1914 completed a 15 mile extension to Loughridge, Fla., where he built yet another sawmill.

Sears began to promote the line as the "Suwannee River Route" and formed the Suwannee River Land Belt Company as the Land Department of the LOP&G to market the cutover timberlands. He used the network of northern railroad agents that he had used earlier in marketing railroad watches that launched his successful mail order business.

Control of the LOP&G passed to the ACL by stock ownership in 1918. In 1921 the New Ten Mile Extension was completed to Flintrock, Fla., 74 miles from Live Oak and only ten miles from St. Marks, the originally intended terminal on the Gulf of Mexico.

The line between Mayo and Alton was abandoned in 1927 with the closing of the big Standard Lumber Company sawmill at Alton. The ten miles between Scanlon and Flintrock was abandoned the same year.

A series of events transpired during this period that thrust Brooks-Scanlon, a leading lumber concern with origins in Minnesota and operations in Louisiana, into the future of the LOP&G. In 1917 Brooks-Scanlon bought a sawmill at Eastport, Fla., near Jacksonville, and associated logging interests at Carbur, Fla., a large logging camp 14 miles south of Perry on the ACL, from the Carpenter-O'Brien Company. In 1923 Brooks-Scanlon also established a logging camp at Scanlon, Fla., 20 miles west of Perry on the LOP&G, from which logs were hauled on log trains to Perry for shipment on the ACL to Eastport.

In 1929, to obtain freight savings on logs, Brooks-Scanlon moved its mill from Eastport to Foley, Fla., a new town established on the LOP&G for that purpose. Brooks-Scanlon also bought the controlling interest of the LOP&G from the ACL that same year.

Closing of Brooks-Scanlon's logging operation at Scanlon in 1941 resulted in abandonment of the LOP&G between Scanlon and Springdale, Fla. in 1942.

Because the South Georgia had been not only a competitor, but also a partner throughout the years, Brooks-Scanlon and LOP&G watched with concern as the South Georgia's future became increasingly unstable. Finally, in order to retain its joint line traffic with South Georgia and ensure a connection with the Southern (GS&F) at Adel, Brooks-Scanlon acquired control by stock ownership of the South Georgia on August 11, 1947. After a half century as independents, the South Georgia and LOP&G were now under common ownership.

"Southern Serves the South"

By 1952 Brooks-Scanlon had completed its timber harvest and arranged to sell its Florida holdings to Procter & Gamble's Buckeye Cellulose Corporation which completed construction of a large pulp mill on the Foley sawmill site in 1954. Buckeye was not interested in owning railroads, so the South Georgia and LOP&G were sold to the Southern as subsidiaries of the GS&F on September 16, 1954.

A rehabilitation program was begun immediately on the South Georgia, replacing 56 and 60-pound rail with 85-pound rail cascaded off the GS&F. Ninety pound rail was already in place in over half of the LOP&G line and the remainder was also replaced with 85 pound rail from the GS&F.

A local General Manager was assigned for the two roads and great pains were taken to ensure that they were operated as independent short lines. It was not until 1969, when the two roads became part of Southern's Coastal Division, that the short lines were managed locally as part of the Southern. They were merged in 1972 as the Live Oak, Perry & South Georgia Railway which, remained a subsidiary of the GS&F. Also in 1972, the Mayo Branch of the LOP&G was abandoned. The 40-mile segment of the LOP&G between Live Oak and Foley Junction was abandoned in 1976.

By 1986 the only remaining rail line in Taylor County was the 82 mile LOP&SG (77 miles between Adel and Perry on the former South Georgia, and 5 miles of the former LOP&G between Perry and Foley). Beginning in 1990 the LOP&SG became the Foley District of Norfolk Southern's Georgia Division. The corporate identity of the South Georgia and LOP&G was lost on October 27, 1993 when the LOP&SG was absorbed into the GS&F, which had become a subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Corporation with the merger of Southern Railway and Norfolk & Western in 1982.

South Georgia and LOP&G in the New Millenium

On December 15, 1995, the 82 mile Foley District was sold to the Live Oak, Perry & Georgia Railroad Company, the new LOP&G, under Norfolk Southern's Thoroughbred Program. The new LOP&G was part of the Gulf & Ohio Railways. It was operated as a division of the new Georgia & Florida Railroad, another Gulf & Ohio Railways company that operated a portion of the original Georgia & Florida Railway which had been acquired by Southern.

Four years later, on June 1, 1999, the former LOP&SG line was sold again to Georgia & Florida RailNet, Inc., a subsidiary of North American RailNet, Inc. Georgia & Florida RailNet continues to operate the line today between Adel and Foley as part of a network of 256 miles of rail lines in south and southwestern Georgia.