Seaboard Air Line Railroad

The Seaboard Air Line Railroad was an American railroad that existed between 1880s and 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime rival, to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad. The company was headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.

History

Seaboard Air Line Railway (SAL) was created in the 1880s by the consolidation of the Seaboard and Roanoke Railroad, which dated back to the earliest decades of American railroads, and other lines in the Carolinas into a single system. Eventually, over 100 lines would be incorporated into the SAL, which was organized by John Skelton Williams.

The company was reorganized as Seaboard Air Line Railroad in 1946. Its main offices were then in Norfolk, Virginia. They were later moved to Richmond, Virginia.

By the middle of the twentieth century the system comprised 4146 miles of railroad: 1558 in Florida, 846 in Georgia, 736 in South Carolina, 630 in North Carolina, and the remainder in Virginia and Alabama. The company employed nearly 18,000 people. In 1951 it transported 43 million tons of freight and 1,465,186 passengers using 399 diesels, 213 steam locomotives, 24,000 freight cars, and 490 passenger cars.

SAL merged with Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1967 (nearly a decade after merger talks were announced) to form Seaboard Coast Line Railroad (SCL).