About The Ashley, Danville and Deanstown Railway

The South began to pick up the pieces. Still smarting in defeat one thing that it was reluctant to do was to have any truck with the railroads. Many towns even paid the railroad companies to go round them. This mistake usually cost them dear and they just faded away with out contact with rest of the world. Eventually realizing their mistake many towns corrected this and the South became criss-crossed by a great many short line railroads. Some were perhaps only five miles long; others reached a hundred or so. Names like Sylvania Central, the Dardanelle & Russellville.

The Ashley Danville & Deanstown was one more. The town elders, by 1875 ten years on, could see the winds of change sweeping the Southern States and, not wishing to see their town go the way of many others, raised the capital to build a line some eighty miles long to connect two of the big railroads now crossing the land. Lines like the Southern and Central of Georgia. Ashley was the connection on one end and Deanstown the other. Danville, (after General Danville Leadbetter) is near enough in the middle. Being a bridge road it very soon grew to be of some importance not only to its own communities but others elsewhere and a fair amount of traffic was thus generated to pass over rails of the Ashley Danville and Deanstown .It also connected with other short lines.

Now thirty more years have passed and the A. D. and D. has lived long and prospered greatly by 1906. The roads are still country dirt roads. Automobiles are creeping in, grass is beginning to grow between the ties but steam transport still reigns supreme. In the way of freight, Simon Pushkinskys' factory still turns out fine old fashioned hand made furniture and is still being shipped on the A D and D. Pumpkins and all types of farm produce leave in cars of all roads. In quiet moments it is still possible to cross the street from the Danville Depot and sip cokes among the grain seed and cultivator blades in Pete and Joe's General Store. Passenger traffic is not inconsiderable, many roads use the A.D. &. D. to shorten their route to the coast via the main lines and a connection with the Georgia Gulf. Now and again, and along with ordinary passenger cars, the odd Pullman passes thru. Inbound comes the usual freight and mail services to keep a small town growing into the twentieth century.