This service could very well belong on the regular pages: it connects two major cities, is over 150 miles long, and the schedule is no slouch. [An average speed of 45.6 MPH is respectable for a normal passenger train; for a mixed train, that's flying!] The reason it shows up here is because of its uniqueness: It was one of the few passenger services to survive the coming of Amtrak, and by more than a decade. If the discussion I heard on an internet forum is true, it would seem that the Georgia Railroad was offered tax incentives to maintain a passenger service between Augusta and Atlanta after Seaboard Coast Line pulled the plug on the Palmetto, and so maintain a passenger service they did.

The Georgia Railroad's mixed train service would survive the decade of the 1970s, but in the early '80s the line would be acquired by the expanding "Family Lines" system (SCL/L & N; now all part of CSX). The new corporate parent's bean counters took a look at this throwback and basically said, "Huh?" Tax advantages or no, the passenger service would not survive the transition into the new corporate structure.