Carson McCullers - Riding the Belt Line

[Will Dockery]

https://www.flickr.com/photos/***@N00/5526513378/

I found a mint condition copy of the Carson McCullers biography "The Lonely
Hunter" by Virginia Spencer Carr at Front Porch of the South for 2 bucks,
the 1976 first edition. Excellent Columbus rferences throughout, little
tidbits that will require some interesting study. First one for now... does
anyone remember or have heard of the "Belt Line Trolley" that circled the
edge of what was then the City Limits of Columbus Georgia? Carson writes of
giving her ticket to the Conductor and sitting back just for the experience
of the ride. I'd love to know the route she took on this mini tour, which
she would very likely begin just outside her Starke Avenue home, Wynnton
Road or Hilton Avenue.

[Will Dockery]

I remember some details of a Trolley line that ran out Linwood Blvd./17th
Street to Lakebottom, where that brick wall is just before 17th crosses the
park, but the line Carson rode seems to circle the outskirts, possibly
Wynnton Road to Hilton Avenue to Warm Springs Road over to... Broadway?

Okay, here it is, and I imagined it pretty closely:

http://www.midtowncolumbusga.org/midtown-characters/midtown-history/

After the Civil War, the invention of the streetcar made suburban life
possible for increasing numbers of citizens across America. In 1887, John
Francis Flournoy and Louis F. Garrard purchased the Columbus Railroad
Company and created the Belt Line trolley, "a coke-burning, steam-powered
dummy engine [that] pulled one or two cars eastward from downtown out 10th
Street up the hill into Wynnton, turning north at Wynnton School, circling
around the northern edge of the new Wildwood Park and returning to downtown
on 18th Street."