Southern responded to the intense competition with the ACL and Seaboard by introducing the Palm Limited, between New York and Jacksonville/St. Augustine, on January 11, 1904. This was the first truly evocative name in the Florida corridor. Though competitively equipped, it took about an hour longer — 26-2/3 hours instead of 25-2/3 — to get from New York to Jacksonville than the ACL or Seaboard trains.

Click image to download a 16.9-MB PDF of this booklet from the Touchton Map Library.

An evocative name wasn’t enough as Southern dropped out of the New York-Florida market after 1915. This may have been due to wartime considerations, but it did not come back after the war. The Southern focused instead on service between Florida and Midwestern cities such as Chicago and Cincinnati.

Part of the problem may have been that the Southern didn’t have its own route from Savannah to Jacksonville. Instead, it relied on the Waycross Short Line, which after 1902 was in the hands of rival Atlantic Coast Line. A map in the back of this booklet shows this route as “Sou. Ry.” in large letters with “A.C.L.” in slightly smaller letters. Southern did have a route from Atlanta to Jacksonville via Valdosta, Georgia (shown on the map as “Geo. Sou. & Fl.,” a railroad controlled and eventually absorbed by the Southern), and that’s the route its trains took from the Midwest.

This 1923 booklet tells about Florida “and how to get there.” It offers four Southern Railway trains: the Royal Palm from Chicago and Cincinnati; the Kansas City-Florida Special from, obviously, Kansas City; the Ohio Special (probably from Cincinnati); and the Suwanee River Special (also from Cincinnati with through cars from Detroit and Cleveland). Clearly, the booklet was not directed to residents of New York or other cities of the Northeast.