Model Railroading > Georgia Road's Flat Top Mountain Swingers

Some time back, I posted some general information about the Georgia Road helper station in Herrin, AL. Local railfan observers refer the operation stationed there as the "Flat Top Mountain Swingers" and the name has good reason No, its not some gaggle of Bluegrass aficionados that hail from the North Alabama sticks, though it is rumored that dueling banjos can be heard drifting on the summer breeze around the small office located there at Herrin. If you do find yourself in happenstance around the area and a banjo sings out in the distance, you have not dropped into a scene from "Deliverance" with a young Burt Reynolds grinning side-mouthed at you, but you have found a place quite remarkable on the combined Georgia Road system map. As odd fact would have it, a couple of the train service crews are part of a bluegrass band and use the gap between shoves to hone their "pickin and grinnin" craft.


Herrin is the home of the only manned helper station on the Georgia Road's Alabama Interstate Railroad subsidiary. Two sets of helpers roam in and out of the station twenty four hours a day, taking turns pushing Georgia Road Memphis, TN-Birmingham, AL trains up the ruling grade and tight curvature into the Warrior River Valley where the "Magic City of the South" known as Birmingham, AL sits squarely in the middle. It is a remote place, lost in the winding black-top gravel roads winding through Jefferson and Tuscaloosa County between Bessemer, AL and Tuscaloosa, AL. It is "smack-dab in the middle" of the Blue Creek Coal fields, and even the name given to the old L&N branch grade of Flat Top Mountain comes from a former Drummond Coal Company strip mine to the north known as Flat Top Mine. As Georgia Road worked to piece together a Class One operation through the 1990s and early 2000s, the L&N branch became the link to former GM&O lines shed by later owner KCS as it worked to build the Meridian Speedway to the south and west. No one ever saw the route as much more than a link to Mississippi interchanges and an origination for Jim Walter Resources coal trains until Georgia Road shocked the railroad world and wrenched the Illinois Central from suitor Canadian National. At that point, Herrin and its claustrophobic pre-fab office became the map center of the link between Georgia Road traffic moving from Chicago, Kansas City and St. Louis to Deep South destinations from Atlanta and Charleston to Jacksonville and Miami. The winding line got a complete makeover in the early 2000s with speed signaling, double track and CTC control. There was even a mainline realignment and a new tunnel to reduce curvature and grading at one point, but the Flat Top Mountain ridge still forced trains to climb and twist. DPU solved many capacity problems, but the iron rich Sleeping Giants mountain chain that surrounded Flat Top made operation particular at best, and down right frustrating at times. To insure fluidity on what had become the backbone of the Georgia Road, men with steady hands and knowledge of the mountain still needed to help the heavier manifest and unit trains into and out of the Birmingham suburb of Bessemer, AL.

So why would any self respecting railfan give such a "middle of nothing" dot on an ALDOT map a second thought? The answer comes in part from how Georgia Road came to pass in the first place. Georgia Road found its roots in the spin-off of the former CofGA lines in Georgia and Alabama by Norfolk Southern RR. The move was done in part to provide monies to buy Conrail and relieve itself of the Deep South version of its W&LE sell off a few years before. What NS could not predict was how the Georgia Road would reach beyond what was at the time, the natural boundaries of the remaining CofGA lines. Somehow Georgia Road gained traffic and with lucrative coal and intermodal contracts (the APL contract being the first and greatest), found ways to expand in ways the NS lawyers that bound it could not imagine. nearly twenty years later, the railroad rated Class One status as a welter-weight, but known for its innovative and customer focus approach that brought customers back to rail service. Being the progeny of a NS spin-off brought a lot of old Southern power. Georgia Road had more than its share of ex SOU SD24, SD35 and SD45 units, most with as delivered SOU style high short hoods. Many were worn out, but in the halls of Precision National found new life following late life overhauls and rebuilding. May of these early units were quickly traded and replaced but the always chronically power tight Georgia Road always seemed to need even the oldest and most worn cores to feed a variety of capital and life-extension rebuilds targeting holes in the system roster. Those units that seemed to soldier on despite the years won places in transfer and helper service around Birmingham. It never hurt that the Road Foreman of Locomotives was a former Southern man, and he carried a sweet spot for the very same l0comotives he ran as a Southern Railway boomer in the 1960s and 1970s. It is no wonder either that many of these units ran in similar stance as they did in their factory new days on the SOU subsidiary railroads, only sporting new burgundy and black paint but still running long hood forward as "the Almightly and Brosnan intended."

These days the unrebuilt units are but a handful, lovingly maintained by the personnel at the Georgia Road Leigh Yard service area in Bessemer, known as the "Bessemer Bullpen." I say lovingly since you better love 'em if you intend to keep a job with that old SOU Road Foreman as your boss. He is known for regularly marching up and down the hostler lines and service pits hollering "give 'em one day more, or hit the door!" These fifty year old units are now finding themselves outclassed by Stephens Railcar Revolution Series Rebuilds that meet the newer EPA emissions and FRA collision standards, or flat out replaced by the newest "techno-toaster" from EMD or GE. If asked about this, the old Foreman is quick to cut his eyes and sneer that his grandson will be shaving with the metal in these new units long before they get even close to the service life of his old SD24 and SD35 units. He is also quick to remind anyone that "his units" are pushing those "damnable electronic nightmares" up the Flat Top grade, not the other way around. You do not have to listen long to understand he has a point. They are simple, rugged and just never quit. They are also tired.

Georgia Road decided that the whole class needed rebuilding or replacing. The SD40ME Revolution Rebuild was earmarked for the job, but with the assimilation of the DME and IC into the core system, these units seemed to always find their way in local and road service in far flung outposts far from Birmingham and the old house track at Herrin, AL. The helper crews laugh when asked about them, indicating that they are the designated cowboys charged with breaking the rebuilds in so they can go to work for someone else. In a period of a few days, the old SOU engines filter back and pick up right where they left off while the new SD40ME units head off to new assignments elsewhere. The decision was made to use the old SD24 and SD35 units as cores for the SD25M Program. Since Georgia Road figured it could not do without the old horses, it looked to rebuilding them much as it did with the old GP38, GP35 and GP30 units in the GP25M program. The GP25M units found themselves in crack intermodal service fresh out of the rebuilder, and they proved that remanufacturing the units could quell the motive power shortages at a significantly less price than purchasing newer units less suited for the day to day rigors of a road switcher. The six axle version of the program followed suit, also building the unit around the turbocharged 12 cylinder primemover. In the SD25M case, the engine was the 710-12ECO, The spare room in the hood allowed for upgraded cooling, emissions reduction and a new cab and internal upgrade in wiring and control. These could approach the same tractive effort of a moderately ballasted SD38 with half the emissions and wheel slip potential. The SD24 and SD35 cores are interchangeable in the program and in the Georgia Road numbering scheme. In order to match fuel capacity, the tanks had to be reworked on the SD24 and SD35, pushing the main air reservoir to the roof. As much as possible was standardized to be interchangeable under the hood of both core models.

The program started in 2013, but slowed due to new locomotive purchases aimed at beating the step up in Emissions requirements set to turn in 2016. In recent days the program was increased for additional units, adding the bulk of the current SD35 roster and much of the remaining SD24 units as core donors. The old Foreman is not amused, but even he admits the program has its benefits and that his grandson might just engineer one of them a dozen years from now after he shaves with his GEVO or ACE razor blade. He seems to be set on that eventuality, and has adopted the new rebuilds as part of his "personal fleet" that he claims. In the meantime, the last of the unrebuilt SD24s mix it up with SD40MEs and SD25Ms at that vague station in Herrin, AL where a banjo can be heard from time to time between shoves up Flat Top Mountain.

H in AL

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Site map for Herrin, AL and Georgia Road Leigh Yard, home shop for the helpers

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Ya know, I've loved your artwork so far but that scheme, IMHO, splits the loco in half with a hump...

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/14 14:15 by wabash2800.

I like your graphics and the well-told back-story for your railroad. Bring on the layout!

The work is excellent. Graphics are superb. I love the pink unit. Would love to see a full size one somewhere. Where did the Susan G Komen decals come from? Are they available somewhere? Again, beautiful stuff.