RailAmerica
company
RailAmerica, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Florida, was a holding company of a number of short-line railroads and regional railroads in the United States and Canada.
In 2007, RailAmerica was acquired by Fortress Investment Group. Before that, it traded on the New York Stock Exchange with the ticker symbol RRA. It was relisted in October 2009 with the ticker symbol RA.
On June 30, 2010, the company announced that it had acquired Atlas Railroad Construction, a construction and maintenance company operating in the Northeast and Midwest United States, for US$24 million.
In April 2011, RailAmerica made its first shortline purchase in over five years by initiating a deal with Gulf and Ohio Railways to acquire three Alabama shortlines for $12.7 million.
On July 23, 2012, Genesee & Wyoming Inc. announced that it intended to purchase RailAmerica in a deal valued at $1.39 billion. Approval of the purchase was granted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on December 19, 2012. While awaiting the decision, Genesee & Wyoming put RailAmerica control in the hands of a trust. They assumed control on December 28, 2012, and the company was in the process of integration to G&W.
Former subsidiaries
RailAmerica controlled the following railroads. It acquired some through purchase of other holding companies: RailLink Canada in July 1999, RailTex in February 2000, ParkSierra and StatesRail in January 2002, and the rail properties of Alcoa in September 2005.
The public source identifies “RailAmerica” as company. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around RailAmerica and company.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “RailAmerica”, the useful work is to connect “company” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q961433. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “RailAmerica”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow RailAmerica primary sources, RailAmerica archive and RailAmerica research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “RailAmerica”?
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- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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This entry incorporates text from “RailAmerica” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.