Atlantic Coast Line Railroad The Atlantic Coast Line Railroad
(ACL), one of three major railroads that served North Carolina
during the twentieth century, traced its roots to a holding
company called the American Improvement and Construction
Company, incorporated in Connecticut on 19 Apr. 1889. The
organizers of the ACL-like their competitors, the founders of
the Seaboard Air Line Railway-were largely businessmen from
Baltimore who began developing a transportation system in
eastern North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia after the
Civil War. On 5 May 1893 the Connecticut legislature approved a
name change from the American Improvement and Construction
Company to the Atlantic Coast Line Company as a step toward
outright purchase of the various individual roads in the
alliance. North Carolina's Wilmington & Weldon Railroad, Norfolk
& Carolina Railroad, and Southeastern Railroad, as well as the
ACL of Virginia and the ACL of South Carolina, merged on 23 Apr.
1900 into the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, a sy