Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay

Company History: The Atlanta & St. Andrews Bay was completed in 1908 between Panama City, Florida (on the Bay) and Dothan, Alabama 89 miles to the north. At first, they made their way hauling forest products but saw a place for themselves in making Panama City into a major port. United Fruit Company agreed, bought the railroad and made plans to make Panama City their primary port for bananas. A&StAB picked up "The Bay Line" nickname during this period. In 1931, United Fruit gave up on these plans and sold the A&StAB to International Paper. In 1994, they officially changed their name to “Bay Line Railroad" and their reporting marks changed from ASAB to BAYL. In 2005, the Bay Line was sold to the Genesee & Wyoming shortline group. In recent years, the BAYL has been extended on the Dothan end east to Hilton, Georgia (where they connect with G&W sister roads Hilton & Albany and Chattahoochee Industrial Railroad) and north to Grimes and Abbeville, Alabama. This was the original Abbeville Southern Railway but it had been part of Atlantic Coast Line for decades. The segment between Dothan and Grimes is over CSX trackage rights.

The Atlanta and St. Andrews Bay Railroad (reporting mark ASAB), also known as the Bay Line, was a Class I railroad which operated in Alabama and Florida. The company was founded in 1906 and opened its mainline between Dothan, Alabama and Panama City, Florida in 1908. Later reclassified as a short-line railroad, its assets were acquired by the Bay Line Railroad in 1994.

As with many railroads in the region, the A&SAB began in the minds of timber investors and land developers seeking to access the agricultural resources of the Florida Panhandle and South Alabama. Chief among them was A. B. Steele, who created the railroad to build south out of Dothan towards the Gulf Coast. The company incorporated on February 14, 1906 and opened its 82-mile (132 km) line between Dothan and Panama City on July 15, 1908. Panama City was incorporated the following year at the terminus of the line. Plans were soon made to extend the railroad north to Atlanta, however financial difficulties and pressure from the Central of Georgia railroad put an end to any plans for extension. Read more on Wikipedia.

Successor/Parent History: The International Paper Company (NYSE: IP) is an American pulp and paper company, the largest such company in the world. It has approximately 56,000 employees, and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The company was incorporated January 31, 1898, upon the merger of 17 pulp and paper mills in the northeastern United States. Its founders and first two presidents were William Augustus Russell, who died suddenly in January 1899, and Hugh J. Chisholm. The newly formed company supplied 60 percent of all newsprint in the country.

Brief History: The U.S. is a country of 50 states covering a vast swath of North America, with Alaska in the northwest and Hawaii extending the nation’s presence into the Pacific Ocean. Major Atlantic Coast cities are New York, a global finance and culture center, and capital Washington, DC. Midwestern metropolis Chicago is known for influential architecture and on the west coast, Los Angeles' Hollywood is famed for filmmaking.