Norfolk Southern on the Georgia and Florida Railroad on Christmas Day 2019.

Traveling through Camilla to attend my aunt's Christmas dinner in Albany, I had just gotten north of the city when I noticed through the trees some hopper cars moving south down the track. Since this is a local line, I was surprised that it was running on Christmas Day, but got turned around as quick as I could to go after it, as I had yet to film any action on this line and opportunity was knocking. I set up in the Dollar Tree parking lot and as the train approached, I got another surprise. The train was being pulled by Norfolk Southern locomotives. It was like a bonus for me because I had started rail fanning in earnest earlier that year but had yet to film any NS action. The NS has a line (formerly Central of Georgia RR) that runs through Albany which this line connects to Thomasville, so the G&F borrowing NS power for a grain run shouldn't have been too much of a surprise. This line is a former Atlantic Coast Line branch that CSX has been leasing to Georgia and Florida Railroad for some time now. It's been reduced to 10 mph due to deferred maintenance, but in the ACL days, it had a few of the Chicago to Florida trains run through on here, including the Southland, Illinois Central's City of Miami, the Flamingo, and the Seminole.