A car transporter stuck on the railroad tracks at the McDonough crossing in Decatur is making for worse than usual traffic in the city this afternoon.  A reader writes in “traffic is totally screwed at the high school!”

Find an alternate route!

Decatur Station circa 1987 courtesy of RailPictures.net

So I realize that the railroad lines in Decatur are anything but “hidden”.

Horns blare. Trains regularly stop traffic.  Especially this week, as CSX has caused major traffic havoc along Decatur streets, closing the South McDonough and Candler Street intersections for rail maintenance.

But have you ever considered: why IS there a train line in Decatur?  Or perhaps a better question is “why was a railroad built through Decatur?”

Quite often the location of cities and towns are highly influenced by the natural landscape.  This is most obvious in cities situated along rivers, lakes and oceans.  Cities more likely to survive and thrive exist in areas when the natural landscape provides them with an advantage over other areas.  Think about the  “natural ports” of New York City, Charleston and Savannah.

Decatur – and Atlanta’s – natural advantage isn’t quite as noticeable as a large body of water or a rushing river.  Yes, Atlanta has a river, but the fact that it’s no where near the population center is a good clue that it wasn’t a major influencing factor in the settlement and success of the city.

To see Atlanta and Decatur’s natural advantage, you actually gotta look at a topographic map.

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Chris Billingsley sends in some excellent photos circa 1988 of what he believes may have been the last passenger train to ever stop at the Decatur Depot.  He writes…

While looking for some pictures for a school project, I found something from 1988. As I remember, the New Georgia Railroad had plans to bring tourists from Atlanta to Stone Mountain with a stop-over in Decatur. I believe that we still had double tracks that allowed trains to run in both directions (east to west) at the same time. The large tree seen in the background was the same tree that shaded a president (maybe Warren G. Harding) in a famous photo from the early 1920s .

Two more great shots – with captions! – after the jump…

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Closed since last Saturday night due to a water main break, The Decatur Minute reports that the “railroad crossing located at E. College Avenue and E. Trinity Place is now open for vehicular and pedestrian traffic.”

Back on her Decatur horse, Pecanne Log says that the city “was home to the original NIMBYs”.  Christa has unearthed a 1939 AJC article where the writer unearthed a few odd facts from “The Inventory of County Archives – DeKalb” about Decatur from an even earlier time.

Among them, a 1860 plan to build a wall on the west side of Decatur to keep “that offensive, boisterous and growing community of Atlanta on its western boundaries”, and a little ditty that Decatur residents used to recite as a rallying cry against laying track for the “dirty” railroads within the city limits.

Christa also references the oft-cited rumor that Decatur residents actually turned down an offer to become the “terminus” station for the coming rail line, but I’ve always heard conflicting reports as to whether this is in fact true.  Most state this as fact – or at least accepted rumor – but a couple doubting Thomases have mentioned to me that there’s actually no proof of such an offer being made (and rejected) and that Atlanta (aka Marthasville, aka Thrasherville, aka Terminus) is actually a more logical spot for a number of railroads as that’s where many of them intersect.

Perhaps the aforementioned aversion to having track inside the city limits was expanded upon to come up with this revised history, which puts Decatur in a slightly more favorable light?  I dunno.  It sure would be interesting to look at “The Inventory of County Archives” though!

Atlanta Avenue Crossing – Decatur, GA (photo courtesy of Beth)

Next Stop…Decatur found this great pic of the Decatur Depot from 1987 over on RailPictures.net.

Any good stories about the Depot when it still operated as a train stop would be most welcome!

Maybe we’ll become so nostalgic that we’ll be compelled to raise another $100,000 to move it back a few feet!