Atmore is considered the official “rail welcome center” of Alabama.

The Escambia County city celebrates rail history – it was first named Williams Station in honor of its train station – each fall with Williams Station Day.

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And one of Atmore’s most infamous moments came when the Black outlaw “Railroad Bill,” who purportedly robbed trains and sold goods to the impoverished in southeast Alabama, was shot and killed during his final shootout with authorities more than 127 years ago in downtown Atmore.

But for almost 18 years the passenger trains have been not going through Atmore, a small city of 8,500 residents 50 miles northeast of Mobile.

Amtrak is set to resume service along the Gulf Coast this year, connecting New Orleans to Mobile with four stops in Mississippi. But the train isn’t going further east toward Atmore anytime soon.

Hope springs anew, thanks to efforts led by Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves. A grant application by the city of Pensacola seeks $500,000 for the study of a Northwest Florida Passenger Rail Corridor through the Federal Railroad Administration’s corridor identification and development program.

“Atmore stands to benefit,” said Jerry Gehman, an Atmore businessman and a former member of the Southern Rail Commission who has long pushed for Amtrak’s return to the city.

Atmore was the only train stop east of Mobile in Alabama before the former Sunset Limited – which operated along the Gulf Coast until 2005 – stopped running after Hurricane Katrina.

“We are a designated stop,” A Gehman said. “Alternate forms of transportation are needed for rural areas.”

Grant opportunity

Northwest Florida officials are hopeful that an influx in federal money through the bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, could spark interest in continuing passenger rail’s connection from Alabama into Florida.

Reeves, behind support from city and county officials in Northwest Florida and including New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, is spearheading efforts to apply for the grant. The officials believe federal funds are available to pursue the passenger rail study thanks to the $66 billion made available through the bipartisan infrastructure law.

The analysis will look at connecting Pensacola and the Florida cities to its east – Crestview, Chipley, Tallahassee, Madison, and Lake City – to Jacksonville. The analysis will also look at extending passenger rail service south from Jacksonville to Orlando.

The analysis will also include connecting Pensacola to the Gulf Coast route to New Orleans.

“This is an unprecedented opportunity to potentially secure $500,000 in federal infrastructure funding, which would be a monumental step toward restoring passenger rail service in Northwest Florida,” Reeves said in a statement to AL.com. “Although we can’t guarantee success, we couldn’t let this opportunity pass us by without making every effort to ensure that the city of Pensacola is included in the resurgence of passenger rail travel in the Southeast.”

Port concerns

The opportunity for restarting passenger rail in Northwest Florida — and including a stop in Atmore – comes ahead of restarting passenger rail service from Mobile to New Orleans sometime later in 2023.

Originally, those plans considered a stop in Atmore. In 2016, an Amtrak inspection train ran along the Gulf Coast and made a stop in Atmore before a throng of cheering residents.

In recent years, though, the Gulf Coast route has been condensed. The only Alabama stop will be in downtown Mobile.

Wiley Blankenship, a current Alabama representative of the Southern Rail Commission – which advocates on behalf of passenger rail – said the biggest sticking point for an Atmore connection has been the crowded freight train movements into and out of Siebert Yard, north of downtown Mobile, which is a major freight rail corridor servicing the Alabama State Docks.

“What we need to do right now, as far as the SRC and all parties go, is focus on getting Mobile to New Orleans running before we start leaping into the next steps,” Blankenship said. “I understand dreaming big, but we need to focus on that start up and getting everything down and efficient before we start moving into the next phase.”

John Driscoll, CEO with the Alabama State Port Authority, said any effort to have Amtrak service extended east of downtown Mobile will need a “rail traffic control study.”

The Port Authority had previously opposed the Amtrak restart along the Gulf Coast and joined the two main freight operators – CSX and Norfolk Southern – in objecting to the restart of the New Orleans-to-Mobile connection before the U.S. Surface Transportation Board last year. But a negotiated settlement ended that case in November, and Amtrak service is slated to end at a future train stop near Cooper Riverside Park adjacent to the Arthur R. Outlaw Mobile Convention Center.

“The Port is growing at a breakneck pace,” Driscoll said in a statement. “With capacity at the container terminal on track to double in the next two years and consistent, triple-digit growth from our intermodal facility in Mobile, it is more important than ever to understand the impact of passenger rail on freight fluidity.”

He added, “We continue to monitor the latest developments and, of course, want to ensure that Alabama’s Port is able to continue serving the state effectively and efficiently. The only way to do this is through a rail traffic control study, which is critically important to assess how Amtrak may impact the Port of Mobile’s unmatched service. In addition, we expect Amtrak would commit to funding and constructing the required infrastructure for their passenger rail operations.”

Take the bus

In the immediate future, a charter bus service might be one option to get rail passengers from Mobile to Pensacola, and vice versa.

Knox Ross, chairman of commissioners for the SRC, said commissioners are currently exploring the possibility of having buses connecting Mobile to a future train station in downtown Pensacola, which would allow Gulf Coast passengers from New Orleans to hop aboard a train bound for Jacksonville, Orlando, or Miami.

“We’re looking at what the numbers look like,” Ross said.

If that occurs, passenger rail would circumvent Atmore and along the CSX rail line that traverses from the State Docks in Mobile to Bay Minette, Atmore, Flomaton and into Northwest Florida.

“There was a lot of desire to run the state-supported service (from New Orleans to Mobile) toward Atmore and to the casino and the Poarch Band of Creek Indians wanted that,” said Ross. “But the problem you run into is an infrastructure issue. You have to go through the (rail) yard in Mobile.”

He added, “It’s difficult to add capacity in there because a lot of it is running through a swamp.”

Indeed, the existing rail route veers off in a snake-like direction from Mobile into Baldwin County toward Atmore before it heads into Pensacola.

The route also has a tragic connection with the deadliest train wrecks in U.S. history. In 1993, 47 people were killed and 103 injured after an Amtrak train derailed on the CSX Transportation’s Big Bayou Canot Bridge north of Mobile. The crash occurred after a barge collided with the rail bridge about eight minutes before the derailment.

Blankenship said the tragedy is not a factor in deciding whether to return the service to Atmore. Amtrak resumed Sunset Limited operations along the CSX rail line years after the tragedy occurred.

But Blankenship said it will be costly to get bridges and other rail infrastructure prepared for Amtrak.

Said Ross, “You never say it can’t be done, but there are a lot of issues there that have to be considered and you need to be realistic about it. Having a bus connection between Mobile and Pensacola that meets up with the train and is on time … it’s something to get Pensacola up and running early and it can be looked at.”

Rail heritage

Atmore Mayor Jim Staff said he believes it would be costly to get the service restarted in his community. He said the small train depot – which has planters hanging from it – would have to be worked on to get it ready for Amtrak service.

He, like the SRC commissioners, is worried about the costs.

“I’d love to see Amtrak come through,” he said. “But it will be expensive.”

In a March 17 letter he wrote in support of the federal grant, Staff said Atmore serves as a “natural evolution of passenger rail” service from New Orleans to Mobile. He said that passenger rail could be economic opportunity “to pockets of poverty.”

Gehman, a former radio journalist who once broadcast the “Train Report” in Atmore, said the community has a history steep in passenger rail.

In the early 1990s, Atmore was recognized for having the highest ridership “of any city our size in the U.S. for Amtrak,” he said. That led to state lawmakers, behind the efforts of Rep. Frank “Skippy” White, passing a resolution in 1991 naming Atmore as the “rail welcome center to the state of Alabama.”

“We pride ourselves as the official rail welcome center,” said Denham. “No other city has that designation.”