Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad

Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad

1885 map of the P&A route and connections
Overview
Headquarters	Pensacola, Florida
Locale	Florida
Dates of operation	1881–1891
Successor	Louisville and Nashville Railroad
Technical
Track gauge	4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge
Previous gauge	5 ft (1,524 mm) and converted to 4 ft 9 in (1,448 mm) in 1886[1]
Length	161 miles (259 km)
Route map Legend FG&A Tallahassee Subdivision AN Railway SP 842.5 00K 811.5 Chattahoochee Apalachicola River 00K 801.5 Grand Ridge 00K 796.6 Cypress Chipola River 00K 785.9 Marianna 00K 776.7 Cottondale Bay Line Railroad 00K 767.2 Chipley 00K 758.0 Bonifay 00K 750.0 Caryville Choctawhatchee River 00K 744.3 Westville 00K 729.7 DeFuniak Springs 00K 716.5 Mossy Head fmr. Eglin Air Force Base Railroad Shoal River 00K 700.8 Crestview Yellow River 00K 680.0 Harold Blackwater River 00K 670.3 Milton 00K 668.6 Bagdad 00K 666.1 Avalon 00K 663.3 Pace Escambia Bay I-10 00K 645.0 Pensacola Goulding Yard CSX PD Subdivision This diagram: view talk edit

The Pensacola and Atlantic Railroad (P&A) was a company incorporated by an act of the Florida Legislature on March 4, 1881,^[2] to run from Pensacola to the Apalachicola River near Chattahoochee, a distance of about 160 miles (260 km). No railroad had ever been built across the sparsely populated panhandle of Florida, which left Pensacola isolated from the rest of the state.^[3] William D. Chipley and Frederick R. De Funiak, both of whom are commemorated in the names of towns later built along the P&A line (Chipley and DeFuniak Springs), were among the founding officers of the railroad company.

Chipley was general manager of the Pensacola Railroad, (formerly the Pensacola and Louisville Railroad, originally the Alabama and Florida Railroad, completed in 1860).^[4] The Pensacola Railroad connected Pensacola with the large, prosperous Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) at Pollard, Alabama, about 44 miles (71 km) northward. The Pensacola Railroad had become a subsidiary of the L&N on October 20, 1880.^[5] It was Chipley, a tireless promoter of his adopted city, who was responsible for initiating discussions with the L&N concerning its extension into the Florida Panhandle.^[6] De Funiak was general manager of the L&N.

Once the P&A was created, De Funiak was named president of the new road, and Chipley became its vice president and general superintendent. On May 9, 1881, the L&N obtained control of the P&A by purchasing the majority of its $3 million worth of capital stock and all of its bonds, also valued at $3 million.^[6][7] Construction was completed in 1883, and in 1891 the P&A was absorbed into the L&N, operating thereafter as the P&A Division of the latter.^[8] After various mergers, CSX Railroad operated the line from 1986 to 2019 as its P&A Subdivision (a reference to the Pensacola and Atlantic).

The line remains in service today as part of the Florida Gulf & Atlantic Railroad,^[9] which bought the line and took over operations on June 1, 2019. CSX retained ownership of the line from milepost 651.0 to milepost 645.0 (Goulding Yard in Pensacola), and has trackage rights over the FG&A.