Waffle House, Joseph Wilson Rogers, and Tom Forkner

Marietta, GA

Built in 1916 by Marietta's Glover Machine Works, this steam locomotive was sold to a Virginia firm to haul lumber before the company reacquired it in 1921. Restored in 1992, it stands as a survivor of Georgia's early industrial age. Glover Machine Works, begun in 1848, remains a family enterprise into its sixth generation and is counted the oldest family-owned manufacturer in the state.

Winder, GA

This steam locomotive, No. 208, was built in 1930 and spent its working life on the Gainesville Midland Railroad before the Seaboard Air Line Railroad presented it to Winder and Barrow County in 1959. Retired as one of the last steam engines still running in the region, it was set here as a permanent tribute to the machines that once moved the nation's freight and passengers.

Hoschton, GA

In the railroad-hungry decades after the Civil War, a rail line could make or break a Georgia town, and the four Hosch brothers meant to make theirs. Founding Hoschton in 1881 along the path of the proposed Gainesville, Jefferson and Southern Railroad, they donated the land for a depot and bet the community's future on the tracks. When the trains came through, the depot became the town's commercial heart, moving cotton, timber, and passengers and knitting this corner of Jackson County into the wider regional economy.

Braselton, GA

In 1876 William H. Braselton, Sr. and his wife Susan Hosch Braselton established a 796-acre farm in western Jackson County, where their children grew up building the store, fertilizer, and mercantile ventures that became the family's fortune. The railroad's arrival in 1902 and a state highway in 1927 let the operation expand, and in 1921 the brothers incorporated as Braselton Brothers, Inc., running a mercantile, grocery, grist and flour mill; the town of Braselton itself was incorporated in 1916. The family even published a monthly booster paper to promote the growing community.