‘The biggest mistake we can make is…’

This is based on my closing remarks delivered last month in Acworth, Georgia

ACWORTH, Georgia — I think we tend to forget history and the impacts of yesterday’s decisions on our world today. But if we look, it’s all around us.

In a city like Atlanta — that is dominated by roads — it might be easy to forget that railroads built the town that we know today.

Before it had the world’s busiest airport, the town had the Western & Atlantic Railroad. Even before it was a town, it had the railroad.

While the Western & Atlantic’s most significant legacy may be the small city that grew up around its southern terminus, in many ways, Acworth may be the perfect city to discuss the railroad’s role in shaping the community.

Too often, people studying railroads focus on a line’s inanimate aspects — the locomotives or the rolling stock. But a railroad’s true legacy is the communities it helped shape.

Even in Acworth, we’re still grappling with some of the same discussions from a century ago. Grade crossings are the perfect example. They’re still controversial, dangerous and frequent topics of discussion.