Seaboard rails continued around Tampa Bay to St. Petersburg, and by 1927 extended to West Palm Beach and Miami starting from Wildwood.

After a couple of months of horse-drawn operation, the first locomotive-pulled service on this line began on September 4, 1834, with a twice-daily train from Portsmouth to Suffolk, Virginia, 17 miles away.

[citation needed] Meanwhile, the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad had begun construction on November 1, 1836, with the first scheduled service between its endpoints beginning on March 21, 1840.

To circumvent this issue the Seaboard Air Line Belt Railroad (SALB) was chartered in 1892 to build an 8-mile branch and a connection with the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis at Howells.

In 1940 the railroad proposed the creation of "Seaboard Airlines," but this idea was struck down by the Interstate Commerce Commission as violating federal anti-trust legislation.

[citation needed] During a spate of interest in aviation shares on Wall Street following Charles A. Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic flight in 1927, Seaboard Air Line shares actually attracted some investor curiosity because of the name's aviation-related connotations; only after noticing that Seaboard Air Line was actually a railroad did investors lose interest.

Prosperity returned after the war, with the efficiently managed Seaboard Road showing a profit even during the Panic of 1873, and paying stockholders an annual dividend of 8 percent for many years.

Express, ran from Atlanta to the Seaboard Road's depot and wharf at Portsmouth, where passengers could transfer to steamships for direct passage to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York.

Also in 1895, the Savannah, Americus and Montgomery Railway, a Savannah-to-Montgomery route, was bought by a syndicate that included the Richmond bankers John L. Williams and Sons.

[8] That same year, the Florida Railroad opened from Fernandina, just north of Jacksonville, southwest to Cedar Key on the Gulf Coast.

In 1863, the Pensacola and Georgia Railroad (P&G) completed a line running east from Quincy, Florida, through Tallahassee to Lake City, where it connected with the FA&GC.

[8] In 1881, Sir Edward Reed acquired the Atlantic, Gulf and West India and its subsidiaries and reorganized them as the Florida Transit Company.

In April 1899, only two months after assuming formal control of the various railroads in the Seaboard system, the Williams syndicate purchased a majority stock interest in the FC&P for $3.5 million.

On July 1, 1900, the Seaboard formally assumed operation of the Georgia and Alabama, the FC&P and the Atlantic, Suwannee River and Gulf railroads.

[15] S. Davies Warfield, a Seaboard director and member of the railroad's executive committee, who had assisted Williams in forming the corporation, was appointed one of the receivers, and was subsequently named chairman.

Some 35 miles northwest of West Palm Beach, the extension ran through Indiantown, which Warfield planned to make the new southern headquarters of the Seaboard.

Warfield, however, was not content with what seemed to be a complete Seaboard system in Florida, and at the end of 1925, announced two new extensions, one from West Palm Beach to Miami and another from Arcadia to Fort Myers and Naples.

In April 1927, Warfield completed a push of the Miami extension even further south to Homestead, and had his architects erect a Mediterranean Revival station there as well.

[1] In addition, Warfield's expansion down the west coast of Florida was seen as an unnecessary extravagance due to the presence of the ACL in the same area.

[1] In December 1930, the Seaboard again entered bankruptcy following the collapse of the Florida land boom and the onset of the Great Depression.

[1] With loans obtained from the federal government's Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the railroad set about modernizing its equipment with new steam freight locomotives and new and rebuilt passenger cars.

[19] By aggressive marketing and technological innovations that drew travelers to the line, such as the highly popular Silver Meteor streamliner, introduced in 1939, Seaboard managed to regain its financial footing.

[17] However, like all American railroads, Seaboard saw a decline in revenues, especially in passenger traffic, from the 1950s into the 1960s, in the face of growing competition from airlines, trucking companies and the Interstate Highway System.

[citation needed] As a strategic move to reduce costs and counter the competition of airlines and trucking companies, merger with the parallel system of Seaboard's chief rival, Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) was first proposed in 1958, but was not approved by the Interstate Commerce Commission until 1967.

[25] The Seaboard and Roanoke acquired a controlling interest in the steamship company in 1851, providing valuable northward connections from the docks at Norfolk for the railroad's passenger and freight business.

[26] Control passed to the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad in 1901, but in 1922, with S. Davies Warfield as its president, the Old Bay Line became a wholly owned subsidiary of the SAL.

For example, the Southern's timetables listed SAL routes for train destinations south of Jacksonville Union Station, the gateway hub for trains from the Midwest and the Northeast to Florida destinations, examples being the Southern's Kansas City-Florida Special, Ponce de Leon and Royal Palm.

Thereafter, Seaboard split most major southbound trains at Wildwood, just north of Coleman, with one section going to Tampa and west coast points, and the other going to Miami.

As the underdog in its competition with the wealthier Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard often strove to bolster its passenger revenues by offering innovative services.

Heard also traveled to New York City, where she met with book editors and publishing houses to establish business agreements and request donations,[47] and then back to Georgia via the Eastern seaboard, recruiting librarians across six states along the way.