That 1930 map does not show the AB&C at all as far as I can tell.

If memory serves, the ACL bought control of the AB&A in circa 1919 and renamed it the AB&C.  ACL absorbed the AB&C circa 1949.

Boyles Yard was the new hump yard built by the L&N in the '50s and is located near the words "Mary Lee" on the 1930 map.  I don't know where the L&N's yard was before that, nor what it was called.

Scott Chatfield

Hmm. Interesting. Part of the reason we picked that was for the slot kind of in-between. So if we were wanting the mix of a little bit of L&N gray/yellow, SCL, and some Family Lines, we'd be looking at what, 1980?

SCL finished buying up L&N stock by 1975 and soon after things started to get blended.  French Grey Family Lines units started to arrive in 1978 and the hemogenization was well under way.  But it wasn't until the mid _'90s_ that finding L&N grey or SCL black got difficult.

1984 saw many units with SBD reporting marks on or under the cab, and some units were fully repainted into Seaboard System by then, but the big order for "Tote Boats", the 5800-class B36-7s, didn't arrive until 1st quarter 1985, and that freed up the U36B fleet to be overhauled.  By the end of 1986 the U36Bs were almost all wearing SBD paint.

The first units delivered to Seaboard System were the SD50s in early 1983, but I gather they mostly stayed on coal trains loading on the L&N for the first few years.  They might have hauled Florida-bound coal trains over the Lineville Sub in 1984.

So choosing 1984 gives you LOTS of motive power variety and a huge variety of freight cars that are available, at least in HO.  It is much easier to model Seaboard System in 1984 _accurately_ than the Southern Railway.  

Scott Chatfield, formerly of the Southern Railway

A friend filled in some gaps in my memory about Birmingham.  So here goes:

SCL moved into L&N's Boyles Yard starting in 1966 and in 1967 ran Lineville Sub trains south from Boyles to Parkwood, near Pelham, before getting back onto the Lineville.  The old AB&C line through Bessemer was downgraded to local service only in 1967 and fully abandoned in 1988.  The old bridge in Bessemer over the former Southern mainline is about all that is left of that line.  

L&N had a small TOTE* ramp at Boyles Yard next to the roundhouse.  It also served SCL.

*Trailer On Train Express, what the rest of us call TOFC, Trailer On Flat Car, aka piggyback service.

Scott Chatfield

Well, looks like era is pretty well set. 

Which yard did they run locals out of to work the industries between old Boyles yard and union station? What about over the road locals, which towns did they cover? What were the operations around Coosa Paper and the mainline yard and what I'm guessing was a storage yard by the papermill proper?

We have about tapped out my knowledge of the ops in that area.  You'll have to find someone more local.

My understanding is the old ACL yard was in SW Birmingham near the old baseball field.  (Robinson?). Only used for local traffic after 1967, and probably little more than storage by 1984.

For more historical info on the Birmingham area, look into the books "Rails Remembered" by Louis Newton.  Three volumes.  I gather Volume 1 Chapter 1 covers the Lineville Sub.

Scott Chatfield