Terminus: The Tracks That Built A City

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
Eighteen thirty-seven.
Just red clay and Georgia pine.
No grid, no skyline yet.
A surveying party cuts a line through the quiet.
And then… a metallic clang.
A single stake driven deep.
They called you Terminus.
Just a point on a map, the end of the Western & Atlantic line.
A place for the engine to stop and breathe.

[Chorus]
From the Zero Mile Post, an iron heartbeat starts to pound.
Georgia Railroad, Macon & Western, coming 'round.
Three lines converge on this unforgiving ground.
And a city rises up from the sound.
From the sound.

[Verse 2]
They tried to give you a softer name.
Marthasville.
For Governor Lumpkin's daughter.
A polite name for a rough-hewn place.
But J. Edgar Thomson saw something more.
A vision in a word… Atlanta.
Feminine for Atlantic.
A promise reaching for the shore.

[Chorus]
From the Zero Mile Post, an iron heartbeat starts to pound.
Georgia Railroad, Macon & Western, coming 'round.
Three lines converge on this unforgiving ground.
And a city rises up from the sound.
From the sound.

[Bridge]
Lemuel Grant walked these lines.
He knew the cost of every tie, every rail.
He saw the future in the steam.
And those old tracks, they never really died.
They just sleep under the asphalt…
or wake up as the BeltLine, a new kind of vein.
Carrying whispers instead of freight.

[Outro]
From Terminus… to Atlanta.
The pulse just changes time.
Still growing…
from that single iron heartbeat.