We love trains.

Well, that may be a bit of an overstatement for one of us but it seems a proper beginning for an article about a railroad. Until recently, the two of us hadn’t taken a train ride since 2018 when we enjoyed passage on the Northern Nevada Railway out of Ely, Nevada.

Two years later, we scheduled a trip from Seattle to Chicago on Amtrak’s Empire Builder but that became a casualty of the pandemic. After a couple of bleak travel years, we’re happy to report a recent nearby rail experience that proved quite enjoyable.

The Savannah, Americus & Montgomery Railway (best-known as the SAM) became a successor to the narrow-gauge Americus, Preston & Lumpkin Railroad that was organized in 1884 to bolster the region’s trade. Several years later, the line was expanded and converted to standard gauge and renamed the Savannah, Americus & Montgomery.

The SAM has been credited with the creation of numerous towns along the line including Vidalia, Cordele and Plains. In the latter 1880s, the railroad encountered financial difficulties, was placed into receivership, sold and in 1900 merged into the Seaboard Air Line Railway which, itself, merged with the Atlantic Coast Line to form the Seaboard Coast Line that subsequently became part of CSX system.

There is much more to this tangled web but you get the idea: railroads tend to have a more complicated family tree than the Kardashians.

The SAM of today is no longer an actual railroad but rather a heritage train that operates on 45 miles of track between Cordele and Archery, Georgia. The rails on which it travels were acquired by the Georgia Department of Transportation in 2000, the locomotives and crew are from the Heart of Georgia Railroad (now part of Genesee & Wyoming that owns or leases over 100 shortline railroads) and the train is managed by the Southwest Georgia Railroad Excursion Authority.

The latter organization was created in 2000 to develop and oversee a passenger excursion train that would attract tourists to the area.

The Excursion Authority acquired several vintage railroad passenger cars, most constructed by Philadelphia-based Budd Corporation that originally built car bodies and in the early 1930s diversified by producing stainless-steel passenger train cars.

The SAM includes a variety of passenger cars including a business car built in 1946 for the president of the Milwaukee Railroad, one of Pullman’s first all-stainless-steel cars built in 1953 for the Milwaukee-Kansas-Texas Railroad and a beautiful privately owned 1925 Pullman sleeper that operated on the Oriental Limited between Chicago and the West Coast.

SAM excursions operate on most Saturdays except in August and January. The most-frequently scheduled trip, the Presidential Flyer, has a morning boarding at the train depot in Georgia Veterans State Park near Cordele and travels to Archer with a two-hour stopover in Plains and an afternoon return to the state park depot.

Other excursions include the one-and-a-half-hour Wine & Cheese Train and the Mystery Murder Dinner Train. Unique excursions are scheduled for Cordele’s Watermelon Festival, Independence Day (operated July 2 this year) and Valentine’s Day. SAM even had special days for kids’ during much of June centered around Thomas the Tank Engine. There is more including a ’70s Day in Plains.

Our own ride on the Mystery Murder Dinner Train was quite a lot of fun. The mystery began in Cordele when members of the cast mingled with passengers at the train depot and continued throughout the ride as cast members rambled from car to car with comments designed to offer hints of what was to come.

The excursion included dinner with a choice of prime rib, chicken, or vegetarian plus an excellent cheesecake for dessert. Passengers were given paper ballots on which they were asked to choose the murderer as the train neared Plains during the return.

The mystery was solved as passengers peered out the windows when the train pulled into the Plains Depot. Cast members, who appeared to have as much fun as the passengers, included the mayors of Americus and Plains and Billy Carter’s daughter and granddaughter.

A calendar with a listing and description of upcoming excursions along with seating choices and ticket prices is available on the Sam website at www.samshortline.com.

David and Kay Scott are authors of “Complete Guide to the National Park Lodges” (Globe Pequot). They reside in Valdosta.