Alabama
Great Southern Railroad Company - (en)
The Alabama Great Southern Railroad Company, Ltd., (AGS) a British company,
was organized in 1877 by railroad investor Emile Erlanger as the successor
to the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad (A&C). The A&C had
completed about 230 miles of a planned 293-mile line from Chattanooga to
Meridian, Mississippi. About 25 of these miles were in Georgia, including
a section from Trenton to Wauhatchie that had been built in 1860 as the
Wills Valley Railroad.
In the late nineteenth century, the AGS was one of the five railroads that
comprised the Queen and Crescent Route between Cincinnati, the Queen City
of the Midwest, and New Orleans, the Crescent City.
In April, 1890 the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway
(ETV&G) and the Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D) purchased a
controlling interest in the AGS. 
After 1895 it was controlled by the
Southern Railway, successor to the R&D and ETV&G. Today it is in
operation as a division of Norfolk Southern Railway.
Poor’s 1917 Manual indicated the company had 90 locomotives and over
5000 railroad cars.
