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34-534: A wide variety of commodities is carried, including aggregates, brick, cement, chemicals, coal, food and feed products, forest products, metallic ores and minerals, steel, and scrap. The company's main line between Panama City and Dothan was constructed in 1906–1908 by the Atlanta and St. Andrews Bay Railroad (ASAB). The Abbeville branch was constructed in 1887–1893 by the Alabama Midland Railway and came under

68-717: A 20-car rail yard and owns equipment to support bulk transfers. In 2017, the Bay Line Railroad was featured in the Panama City Living Magazine. As of 2023, Genesee & Wyoming ’s Bay Line Railroad has a total of 182 miles (44 in Alabama , and 138 in Florida (includes Chattahoochee Bay Railroad )), and has a maximum capacity of 286,000 lbs. Atlanta and St. Andrews Bay Railroad The Atlanta and St. Andrews Bay Railroad ( reporting mark ASAB ), also known as

102-692: A branch line from Grimes to Abbeville, Alabama. The new railroad, the Abbeville-Grimes Railway Company , was operated by the A&;SAB. On January 1, 1994, the Rail Management Corporation acquired the assets of the railroad and created a new company, the Bay Line Railroad , to operate it. Construction of the branch spanning 7 miles (11 km) from Campbellton, Florida , to Graceville was completed on July 14, 1971. Graceville

136-510: A common sight along railroads in industrial and rural cities alike. As automobile and roadway technology improved throughout the early and mid-20th century, most low volume industry spurs were abandoned in favor of the greater flexibility and economic savings of trucking. Today, railroads remain the most economical way to ship large quantities of material, a fact that is reflected in industrial spurs. Most modern day spurs serve very large industries that require hundreds, if not thousands, of carloads

170-464: A mainline, they tend to have lower maintenance and signaling (train control) standards. Before the rise of the long-distance trucking in the early 1930s, railroads were the primary means of transportation around the world. Industries of the era were commonly built along railroad lines specifically to allow for easy access to shipping. Short (under a mile, oftentimes only several hundred yards) industrial spurs with very small (under ten car) capacities were

204-522: A more important through route, usually a main line . A very short branch line may be called a spur line . Branch lines may serve one or more industries, or a city or town not located on a main line. Branch lines may also connect two or more main lines. An industrial spur is a type of secondary track used by railroads to allow customers at a location to load and unload railcars without interfering with other railroad operations. Industrial spurs can vary greatly in length and railcar capacity depending on

238-786: A section of the West Rail line . Discontinued services include the Sha Tau Kok Railway and the Wo Hop Shek Branch . A spur line to Siu Sai Wan has been proposed. Delhi On the Delhi Metro , the Blue Line has a Branch Line with 8 Stations, linking Yamuna Bank to Ghaziabad via Anand Vihar ISBT and terminating at Vaishali. The first section of the Branch opened on 8 January 2010 with Anand Vihar as its terminal with six stations. It

272-523: A subsidy for grain transport, and instead allowed railways to absorb branch line subsidies freely without making effort to improve the profitability of the lines. The term "grain-dependent branch lines" began being used as early as 1978 to refer to the special case of these branch lines in agricultural areas whose viability depended on the economics of grain transport. The Western Grain Transportation Act of 1983 addressed this case specifically, but

306-461: A year. There is an international branch line between Italy and Vatican: the 300-metre Vatican Railway , connecting from the Pisa-Rome railway mainline at Roma San Pietro railway station , to Vatican City station . Many British railway branch lines were closed as a result of the " Beeching cuts " in the 1960s, although some have been re-opened as heritage railways . The smallest branch line that

340-593: Is a woodchip mill near Abbeville, which provides woodchips for the Panama City paper mill. The Bay Line accessed the Abbeville & Grimes branch via trackage rights with CSX between Grimes and Dothan. The Abbeville branch was included in the sale to the Bay Line Railroad. The A&G was formally merged into the Bay Line on June 26, 1996. Branch line A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off

374-552: Is still in operation in the UK is the Stourbridge Town Branch Line from Stourbridge Junction going to Stourbridge Town . Operating on a single track, the journey is 0.8 miles (1.3 kilometres) long and the train takes around two and a half minutes to complete its journey. In North America, little-used branch lines are often sold by large railroads to become new common carrier short-line railroads of their own. Throughout

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408-492: 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

442-529: The Bay of Plenty Region , lines were built inland to provide rail access to large logging operations. Today, many of the branch lines have been closed, including almost all of the general-purpose country lines. Those that remain serve ports or industries far from main lines such as coal mines, logging operations, large dairying factories, and steelworks . In Auckland and Wellington , two branch lines in each city exist solely for commuter passenger trains. For more, see

476-717: The Gladstone Branch in New Jersey; as well as the New Canaan Branch , Danbury Branch , and Waterbury Branch in Connecticut . The Long Island Rail Road also refers to its services as "branches". In Chile, there are a lot of branch lines on its main line, of only a few remain operational. Most only operating in turistic services (like the Antilhue-Valdivia branch line), others have been taken over by other railways (like

510-1013: The Grand Trunk , Canadian National , or Canadian Pacific ) which would acquire formerly independent short line railways for use as branch lines, with the short line often continuing to exist as a subsidiary. For example, when the Canadian Pacific acquired the Algoma Eastern Railway (a short line) in 1930, it soon after abandoned much of the Algoma Eastern mainline, but retained sections close to Algoma Eastern–Canadian Pacific junctions as short branch lines or spurs. The National Transportation Act of 1967 provided government subsidies for branch lines. Western railway development in Canada worked in concert with land settlement and cultivation, as pioneers were settled near railway lines, often on land

544-761: The North South Line between Jurong East and Choa Chu Kang stations was operated as a separate line, known as the Branch line . It was merged into the North–South Line with the opening of the Woodlands Extension in 1996. The future Jurong Region Line and Cross Island Line will also have branch lines. New Zealand once had a very extensive network of branch lines, especially in the South Island regions of Canterbury , Otago , and Southland . Many were built in

578-672: The South Tseung Kwan O Spur Line to LOHAS Park station , opened in 2009. Earlier, a spur line was built in 1985 on the East Rail line to serve Racecourse station , bypassing Fo Tan station . Also, the Tsim Sha Tsui Extension  [ yue ] was built in 2004 on the East Rail line to serve East Tsim Sha Tsui station . However, after the Kowloon Southern Link was completed in 2009, this spur line turns into

612-427: The A&SAB was granted Class I status. The company offered sleeper and coach passenger train service nightly between Panama City and Atlanta Union Station via Albany and Macon. The trains went over Central of Georgia Railway tracks from Dothan, Alabama, to Atlanta. At some point between 1955 and 1956 A&StA terminated all passenger service --coach and sleeping car service. TOFC service began in 1962 with

646-523: The Louisville and Nashville, abandoned the line into Graceville on January 16, 1984. The A&SAB purchased the small yard and wye track in Graceville from the vacating Seaboard and continued serving the city. Declining traffic prompted the abandonment of the branch by the mid 1990s. Stone Container Corporation purchased the line between Grimes and Abbeville on March 1, 1989. The primary source of traffic

680-666: The San Rosendo-Talcahuano branch line, which has been taken over by Biotrén and the Laja-Talcahuano train service) however, there is one branch line that still remains as fully operative. The Talca-Constitución branch line, which uses trains with bus motors. Two extensions to the MTR rapid transit network were built as branches of existing lines: the Lok Ma Chau Spur Line to Lok Ma Chau station , which opened in 2007; and

714-599: The U.S. state of New Jersey . The line is a short branch of the Northeast Corridor Line , running from Princeton Junction northwest to Princeton with no intermediate stops. Also known as the "Dinky Line", at 2.9 mi (4.7 km) it is the shortest scheduled commuter rail line in the United States. The run takes 4 minutes, 47 seconds. Other than the Princeton Line, other surviving branch lines include

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748-469: The United States and Canada, branch lines link smaller towns too distant from the main line to be served efficiently, or to serve a certain industrial site such as a power station either because of a location away from the main line or to reduce congestion. They were typically built to lower standards, using lighter rail and shallow roadbeds when compared to main lines. Much of Canada's branch line history relates to large rail transport conglomerates (such as

782-550: 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

816-501: The construction of ramps at Panama City and Cottondale. Additional expansion came with the construction of a branch line to Graceville in 1971. In 1979 International Paper sold the railroad to Southwest Forest Industries , and the railroad changed hands again with the sale of Southwest Forest Industries to the Stone Container Corporation in 1987. In 1989, Stone Container Corporation purchased from CSX Transportation

850-664: The control of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad in 1902. CSX Transportation , eventual successor to the ACL, sold the line to the Abbeville–Grimes Railway Company (AG) in 1989. This company was merged with the Bay Line Railroad on June 26, 1996. The Stone Container Corporation had owned the ASAB since 1987. Effective January 1, 1994, it sold the assets of the railroad to Rail Management Corporation , which created

884-552: The first president of the Canadian National Railway , said that although most branch lines cannot pay for themselves, they are even essential to make main lines pay. In the United States, abandonment of unproductive branch lines was a byproduct of deregulation of the rail industry through the Staggers Act . The Princeton Branch is a commuter rail line and service owned and operated by New Jersey Transit (NJT) in

918-534: The late 19th century to open up inland regions for farming and other economic activities. The branches in the South Island regions were often general-purpose lines that carried predominantly agricultural traffic, but lines elsewhere were often built to serve a specific resource: on the West Coast , an extensive network of branch lines was built in rugged terrain to serve coal mines, while in the central North Island and

952-605: The new Bay Line Railroad company to operate it. Genesee & Wyoming acquired all the assets of Rail Management on June 1, 2005, including the Bay Line Railroad. In 2016, the Bay Line Railroad entered into an agreement with the Panama City Port Authority to operate a transload facility at the port’s Intermodal Distribution Center approximately 15 miles from Port Panama City. Choice Terminals provide customers with delivery, storage, inventory management and transloading of bulk products. The Bay Line Choice Terminal features

986-457: The railroad north to Atlanta , however financial difficulties and pressure from the Central of Georgia railroad put an end to any plans for extension. World War II brought about a considerable increase in traffic on the A&SAB. Several military bases in the vicinity of Panama City ensured the Bay Line would remain a hotbed of activity for the duration of the war. Shortly after the war in 1947,

1020-556: The railways had owned. However, by the mid-20th century, railways began neglecting lines in western agricultural regions. This was historically driven by factors such as the Crow Rate , which regulated the price railways could charge for shipping grain. Railways had little incentive to invest in rural Prairie branch lines, but were legally unable to abandon them under the National Transportation Act , which also did not provide

1054-507: The requirements of the customer the spur is serving. In heavily industrialized areas, it is not uncommon for one industrial spur to have multiple sidings to several different customers. Typically, spurs are serviced by local trains responsible for collecting small numbers of railcars and delivering them to a larger yard, where these railcars are sorted and dispatched in larger trains with other cars destined to similar locations. Because industrial spurs generally have less capacity and traffic than

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1088-496: Was further extended to Vaishali in 2011. The line is planned to be extended from Vaishali to Mohan Nagar via Sahibabad Station to link with the main line. The East West Line of the MRT system in Singapore has a two-station branch to Changi Airport . The first station, Expo , opened in 2001. It was extended to Changi Airport station the next year. From 1990 to 1996, the section of

1122-510: Was located at the terminus of the Georgiana branch of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad . This allowed for interchange between the two railroads and access to a Southwest Forest Industries woodchip mill located in Graceville that supplied the Panama City paper mill. In addition to the woodchip mill, Gold Kist operated a peanut mill in Graceville. The Seaboard System Railroad , successor to

1156-488: Was repealed in 1994 in the wake of the North American Free Trade Agreement and budget-balancing initiatives in favour of a one-time payout by the federal government directly to farmers, to arrange transport of grain themselves. From the mid-1970s to the late 2010s, more than 9,300 kilometres (5,800 mi) of Prairie branch lines were abandoned or had a discontinuance of service. David Blyth Hanna ,

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