The Backwoods Shortline | Georgia Woodlands Railroad

Описание: Nestled deep in the backwoods of northeast Georgia, sits a small town called Washington, which hosts an even smaller shortline railroad, the Georgia Woodlands Railroad, owned and operated by Omi-Trax Corporation. This little railroad, which only has one locomotive on site for operations, has a ton of business going from Washington, Georgia down to the CSX Interchange on the Georgia Subdivision, in Barnett, Georgia.

The Georgia Woodlands has a small handful of customers which are all in Washington, GA, starting with car storage for numerous companies which begins at Hospital Drive crossing and goes north until the end of the line. Next up is Burt Lumber Company located off of the same road, Hospital Drive, which produces wood chip loads for International Paper in Savannah, GA. Then you have Pliant Corp. which receives plastics loads for fabrication of various plastic goods. Lastly, the Georgia Woodlands has its own Transload Terminal Track for any offline customers who need shipments into the area, occasionally getting used for plastic and chemical transloading.

This line is approximately 17 miles long with the last couple of miles being disused beyond long term car storage. It was originally a branch line of the Georgia Railroad hosting upwards of 20 trains a day between passenger services and freight to and from Augusta, Macon, & Atlanta Georgia. One of our favorite spots is the original Georgia Railroad Wooden Trestle that spans over the Little River just outside of Ficklin Georgia, as well as the Ficklin Depot which still stands today looking over the not so busy branch line and farm fields.

A branch line can be defined by many terms depending on who you ask, but for the woodlands, this roughly graded track is often no different than an industry spur held together by weeds, dirt, old and new ties and some lightly spread ballast to finish it off.
Washington Georgia seems to have had a locomotive pit of sorts for servicing back in the days before OmniTrax bought out the once family shortline company.
You can see ties and numerous indents in the dirt and ground that indicated a three-track yard some time ago.
There’s even an old radio communications tower left over from the earlier days of the shortline when they operated out of the depot up in downtown. It appears that around 2009 operations ceased at this location after an in-town customer at the butt end of the line closed up shop, and they moved down a thousand feet to the location of the pit that’s still here. The locomotive pit was built sometime around 2014, but the new crew offices were already located at where our video started today off of State Spur 44 at least since mid 2011.

After the chase, we headed downtown for a bite to eat and some ice cream at a local family creamery called Washington Creamery. The couple who runs it were very generous in letting me film and promote their little establishment and I would say that the Ice Cream was definitely worth the walk into town! Parking is free here, and everyone is friendly and welcoming.

The people and towns along this little branch line hold a lot of history and even more so, memories. The buildings may be falling apart but the lonesome whistles of the past aren’t forgotten.

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