Azalea Sprinter

The Azalea Sprinter is a seasonal scenic excursion in Georgia's Pine Mountain country, running roughly ninety-minute round trips over Georgia Central rails between Manchester and Warm Springs during spring and fall. The corridor it travels is steeped in railroad history. Manchester is a railroad town to its bones: it was established in 1907 when the Atlanta, Birmingham and Atlantic Railway was extended north to that point, grew into the crossing of two major rail lines toward Atlanta and Columbus, and saw its founding road merged into the Atlantic Coast Line in 1946 — CSX still keeps a rail yard in town, renovated in 2019. Neighboring Warm Springs, four miles away by road, rose as a spa town whose constantly flowing ninety-degree mineral springs drew nineteenth-century vacationers, many arriving by rail at nearby Durand before finishing the trip overland; the town later became world famous after Franklin D. Roosevelt began visiting in 1924 and built the Little White House there. The excursion train ties together the railroad and resort stories of these two Meriwether County towns.