When the success of the young South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company encouraged the people of Charleston to consider more extensive railroad building than the original Charleston to Hamburg line of road, the first branch line built was one to the state capital, Columbia.

Constructed by the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad Company, and completed in 1840, the line to Columbia was originally planned as part of a longer railroad reaching north through South and North Carolina, along the valley of the French Broad River, across the mountains to Tennessee, and running from there via Knoxville southwest of the Cumberland Mountains to Lexington, Ky., and on to Cincinnati.

A view of the Columbia passenger station.

Four years later, however, the trunk line plan was abandoned and the two companies merged to form the South Carolina Railroad Company, which later became the South Carolina and Georgia Railroad Company. It was not until the South Carolina and Georgia became a part of the Southern Railway in 1899 that the old dream of a trunk line from South Carolina to the west was realized - and over practically the same route that the early builders had chosen.

Today Columbia is the headquarters of one of the seven operating divisions that make up the Southern's Eastern Lines. The lines of railroad directed from the Columbia division offices in the passenger station extend north to Charlotte, to Greenville and to Spartanburg; and south to Augusta and to Hardeeville. There are 13 in bound and 13 outbound freight trains serving Columbia daily. Five passenger trains inbound and the same number outbound daily give Columbia travelers access to other cities in the South and the nation.

Last fall the Southern completed remodeling the interior of the passenger station in Columbia. The changes brightened the appearance of the waiting rooms for railway passengers, modernized and relocated the depot ticket office, and provided additional office space for Southern Railway people who had previously maintained offices elsewhere in town.

The Southern's claim department and freight traffic department at Columbia have now had time to get settled in the new offices at the station. Well pleased with the change, both the claim agents and the freight traffic men find it an asset to their work to be located "on the railway" rather than downtown, and to be near neighbors of the operating department division offices.

(A busy city and railroad center, Columbia proved a little too much for Ties to take in all at once. The city freight station and the operations at Andrews Yard will be covered in a later issue of Ties. The present visit will be concerned principally with the division offices and the passenger station, including the new offices added in the remodeling of the building.)