Construction and early years From Jacksonville west to Lake City, the Florida Central and Western Railroad was first built by the
Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad (not to be confused with the
Florida Gulf and Atlantic Railroad, the current operator of the line). The Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central Railroad (FA&GC) was chartered on January 24, 1851 by Abel Seymour Baldwin (the namesake of
Baldwin, Florida) and construction began at Lake City in 1857. During the
Civil War, the railroad figured in the
Battle of Olustee when Union Brigadier General
Truman Seymour led troops west toward Lake City along the line, destroying the junction at
Baldwin, and then engaging Confederate troops near
Olustee Station. The tracks and junction were rebuilt after the war, but the railroad defaulted on its payments to the Florida
Internal Improvement Fund. The Pensacola and Georgia Railroad was chartered in January 1853, and was to be built east from
Pensacola, Florida, but instead started at Tallahassee and was built east. It reached
Lake City, Florida in 1860 where it connected to the Florida, Atlantic and Gulf Central. The P&G also built a short branch from
Drifton north to
Monticello. In 1855, the P&G also took over the
Tallahassee Railroad, which ran south from Tallahassee to the port at
St. Marks, Florida on the
Gulf of Mexico. The P&G then built from Tallahassee west to four miles (6 km) short of
Quincy, stopping in 1863 in the middle of the
American Civil War.
George W. Swepson, a notorious
scalawag, purchased both the P&G and the FA&GC in 1868. After renaming the FA&GC the
Florida Central Railroad, set his carpetbagger protégé,
Milton S. Littlefield, a former Union general known as the "Prince of Carpetbaggers", loose in Tallahassee to buy, cheat, and otherwise defraud Florida legislators in order to obtain a new charter for a railroad that Littlefield promised would be extended west from Quincy to
Pensacola. The Tallahassee Subdivision was notably used by the Seaboard Air Line for passenger service from Jacksonville to
New Orleans, which was operated jointly with the
Louisville and Nashville Railroad. This daily passenger service was known as the
New Orleans-Florida Express and the
New Orleans-Florida Limited before being renamed the
Gulf Wind in 1949. In addition to passenger service, the line also carried two daily Red Ball freight trains and a local freight train six days a week round-trip from Baldwin to Tallahassee in the 1950s. A through freight train also ran from Tallahassee to Chattahoochee daily at the time. The line was busy enough in the 1950s to warrant the installation of
Centralized traffic control along the Tallahassee Subdivision from Baldwin to a point just west of Tallahassee.
Later years In 1967, the Seaboard Air Line merged with their long-time rival, the
Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL). The Tallahassee Subdivision crossed or connected with ACL branch lines in
Jacksonville, Mattox,
Live Oak,
Drifton, and
Chattahoochee. This left the line without passenger service until 1993, when Amtrak extended the
Sunset Limited to Miami via Jacksonville. The
Sunset Limited ran the line until late 2005 due to damage as a result of
Hurricane Katrina further west. The
Sunset Limited has terminated in
New Orleans ever since. ==Current operations==