The commission shall have power and authority:

(1) To ascertain the cost of construction and the present value of properties in Georgia owned by railroad companies; and to that end, the commission may employ necessary experts;

(2) To prescribe rules with reference to the use, construction, removal, or change of spurtracks and sidetracks, with full power to compel service to be furnished to manufacturing plants, warehouses, and similar places of business along the line of railroads where practicable and where in the judgment of the commission the business is sufficient to justify the same and on such terms and conditions as the commission may prescribe;

(3) To order and compel the operation of sufficient and proper passenger service when in its judgment inefficient or insufficient service is being rendered to the public or any community;

(4) To order and compel the making and operating of physical connections between lines of railroads crossing or intersecting each other or entering the same incorporated city, when in its judgment such connections are practicable and in the public interest;

(5) To fix penalties for neglect on the part of railroad companies to adjust overcharges and losses, or failure to decline to do so, if deemed unjust, in a reasonable time;

(6) To prescribe rules requiring the prompt receipt, carriage, and delivery of freight and the prompt furnishing of cars to shippers desiring to ship freight, and to prescribe penalties for failure to observe such rules, and to prescribe rules and penalties regarding the transfer of cars through yards of connecting roads;

(7) To order the erection of depots and stations where it deems the same necessary and to order the appointment and service of depot or station agents; and

(8) To regulate schedules and compel connections at junction points of competing lines.