The Southern Railway (also known as Southern Railway Company and now known as the Norfolk Southern Railway) was a class 1 railroad based in the Southern United States between 1894 and 1982, when it merged with the Norfolk & Western to form Norfolk Southern. The railroad was the product of nearly 150 predecessor lines that were combined, reorganized and recombined beginning in the 1830s, formally becoming the Southern Railway in 1894. At the end of 1971, the Southern operated of railroad, not including its Class I subsidiaries Alabama Great Southern (528 miles or ); Central of Georgia (1729 miles); Savannah & Atlanta (167 miles); Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway (415 miles); Georgia Southern & Florida (454 miles); and twelve Class II subsidiaries. That year, the Southern itself reported 26,111 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 110 million passenger-miles. Alabama Great Southern reported 3,854 million net ton-miles of revenue freight and 11 million passenger-miles; Central of Georgia 3,595 and 17; Savannah & Atlanta 140 and 0; Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway 4906 and 0.3; and Georgia Southern & Florida 1,431 and 0.3. The railroad joined forces with the Norfolk and Western Railway (N&W) in 1980 to form the Norfolk Southern Corporation. The Norfolk Southern Corporation was created in response to the creation of the CSX Corporation (its rail system was later transformed to CSX Transportation in 1986). Southern and N&W continued as operating companies of Norfolk Southern until in 1982, when Norfolk Southern merged nearly all of N&W's operations into Southern to form the Norfolk Southern Railway. The railroad has used that name since. History Official predecessors Richmond, York River and Chesapeake Railroad (1894) Richmond and Danville Railroad (1894) Memphis and Charleston Railroad (1894) East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway (1894) Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway (1894) Creation and independent status The pioneering South Carolina Canal and Rail Road Company, Southern's earliest predecessor line and one of the first railroads in the United States, was chartered on December 19, 1827, and ran the nation's first regularly scheduled steam-powered passenger train – the wood-burning Best Friend of Charleston – over a six-mile section out of Charleston, South Carolina, on December 25, 1830. By October 1833, its 136-mile line to Hamburg, South Carolina, was the longest in the world. The company leased enslaved African Americans from plantation owners when free white people refused to work in