Since I had recorded every crossings from Birmingham to Glenco on the ATN recently, I decided to make a compilation of all of the crossings on the part of the line originally built by the SAL for my 10,000 sub special. As what's now the ATN was built by three different railroads, I've decided to divide the ATN up into three parts for these videos. As stated earlier, this first part covers the section built by the SAL, which runs from Birmingham to Wellington. The second part will cover the part built by the L&N, which runs from Wellington to Attalla, and the final part will cover the section built by the NC&StL, which runs from Attalla to Guntersville.

This part of the line was originally built by the Seaboard Air Line (reporting mark: SAL) as part of their mainline from Birmingham, AL to Atlanta, GA. However, as traffic along the line declined over the years and the SAL was merged into the SCL, SBD, and later CSX, the need for the line dropped over time. Eventually, either the SBD or CSX, decided that keeping the line open wasn't worth it, and abandoned and tore out the section between Wellington, AL and Smyrna, GA, tying the eastern end of this line out of Birmingham into a remaining section of the L&N's Mineral Loop through Gadsden (which was also tied into the NC&StL line to Guntersville at the northern end), calling this piecemeal line the CSX Mineral Subdivision. In 2004, CSX leased the line to Omnitrax, who created the Alabama & Tennessee River Railway across the entire Mineral Sub.

This part of the ATN is still mostly original from when the CSX operated the line, as the ATN hasn't done many upgrades to this section of it. As such it features a wide variety of SAL, SCL, SBD, and older (as well as slightly newer) CSX installs and equipment along it, with many old US&S signals and 8 inch lights remaining. So far, only one crossing has been replaced entirely (with videos of it both pre and post upgrades being included), while only one other has had the lights at it upgraded at all. Most of the changes the ATN seems to have done here has primarily been replacing the occasional dead bell with a newer electronic bell. Most of the changes that had been done along this part of the line were done by CSX, though it appears to have primarily been knockdown replacements and having gone through and replaced most of the original bells back in the 1980s, it seems like. This section also features a rather notable crossing, which has the last working US&S Teardrop bell in Alabama (in addition to the last SAL splitmast signal in the state)!