Florida Central & Peninsular Railroad In the early 1880s a series of railroad consolidations in northern Florida culminated in the establishment of the Florida Railway and Navigation Company in 1884. In November of 1885, the FR&N entered receivership but continued to expand, adding lines in the Jacksonville area and a connector to Plant City. In 1888 financier W. Bayard Cutting and other investors purchased the FR&N and reorganized it in the following year as The Florida Central and Peninsular Railway Company. The new company, which operated tracks from the Atlantic at Fernandina to the Gulf coast at Cedar Key and St. Marks, quickly expanded south to Tampa and other areas of central Florida. It also began looking north to Georgia and beyond. In 1892-93, the FC&P arranged a lease of the brand new South Bound Railroad, a 136-mile line between Savannah and Columbia, S.C. completed in 1891. To connect this line with its Florida system, the FC&P built a new 138-mile Savannah-Jacksonville line through Georgia’s coastal counties. When it opened in January, 1894, a 274-mile line from Jacksonville to Columbia was created. In 1899, the Williams and Middendorf group of Richmond and Baltimore purchased the FC&P and made it part of their Seaboard Air Line. It was merged into the Seaboard Air Line Railway Company in 1903. 1895 map (44K)   Georgia's Railroad History & Heritage. Copyright, Steve Storey. Railroad History | The Depot List | Locomotives On Display | Odds & Ends | Sources & References | Home