I was going to write a sentimental post about Norfolk Southern’s sale of two lines out of Asheville, N.C., to Kansas-based shortline conglomerate Watco, which launched its brand new 91.8-mile Blue Ridge Southern on July 26. Both routes were once Southern Railway territory. One line was part of the rugged but scenic Murphy Branch and the other led to famous (or infamous, depending on your viewpoint) Saluda grade, long known as the steepest mainline grade in North America (though the inactive grade itself wasn’t part of the sale). As many of you know, this part of Western North Carolina is home territory for me, so these are familiar rails that I view with more than just a passing interest. I spent many great days watching trains climb or descent the mountain, rode two excursions there, and enjoyed blackberries from the embankments while SD40-2s pumped air for what seemed like hours before descending. But we each have that favorite part of our home railroad, and the Murphy Branch and the Saluda line are no different. So I decided not to comment on that.
I also thought about writing a history piece and reached out to my friends who know this cluster of tracks from a professional standpoint. Dick Kimball, who retired from Norfolk Southern, recalls how traffic patterns changed in and around Asheville, N.C. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, this was one of the big freight traffic generating regions on the Southern Railway. But after furniture and textile traffic went away in the 1960s and 1970s and Westmoreland’s coal mine in southwest Virginia played out and Duke Power began sourcing coal for its Charlotte-area power plants off the former Norfolk & Western, Asheville wasn’t quite so busy any more. Midwestern traffic flowed through the Altavista (Va.) gateway. Wood chips traveling from South Carolina forests were tripled and sometimes quadrupled upgrade with six-axle power at Saluda to the paper plant at Canton, N.C. That’s not enough to keep an expensive-to-operate piece of track open. Not even the efficiencies of modern A.C.-traction power and distributed power units could change the equation.
I decided that the real meaty topic is about the future of the tracks that didn’t get sold: The much beloved or reviled Saluda grade. Norfolk Southern quit running Saluda as a through route in December 2001 and put the line on ice to see what the future holds. Nobody in the railroad industry wants to repeat the 1970s and 1980s sin of ripping up the route that turns out to be ideal for traffic years later (pick your favorite lost line, the Seaboard between Birmingham and Atlanta, the Lackawanna Cutoff in New Jersey, heck, the entire Milwaukee Road in the Pacific Northwest; prime examples abound). Every time anybody talks about Saluda (or Union Pacific’s dormant ex-Rio Grande Tennessee Pass route in Colorado for that matter), the participants in the discussion fall into two camps: Those who hold out home for reinstatement and those who are ready to show up to photograph the scrapping operations that must be eminent. I love Saluda, but I’m also a realist. Here are my three guesses as to the future of “the mountain.”
1. Keep it on ice and hope traffic comes along.
Why do that? The cost is low, and as we’ve seen with Bakken oil and frac sand, the next wave of freight traffic could come from almost anywhere. Technology can change the game, mergers can change the game, and developments around the world can change the game. If anything changes in the next few years, it will be East Coast shipping thanks to the widened Panama Canal; does the thought of intermodal trains on Saluda intrigue you?
Argument against it: It just gets more expensive by the day to rebuild the line. If traffic does materialize, there are other, easier ways to go that could benefit from laying double track.
Odds of it happening: 6 in 10.
2. Abandon it and make it a rail trail.
Why do that? Nobody is going to want to run mainline trains on a 4.7 percent grade any more. Nobody is desperate enough to move freight on such a difficult line to run. Saluda’s time has passed.
Argument against it: When it’s gone, it’s gone. The route won’t return and the opportunity is extinct. Also, my good friend, railroad book author Matt Bumgarner, tells me the line through Polk County, N.C. is a mixture of easements and purchased land, so that makes it difficult to piece together a through trail. If it’s abandoned, the easements revert to the land owners.
Odds of it happening: 4 in 10.
3. Sell to someone else for freight and possibly tourist operations.
Why do that? Puts the route back into service. Generates cash and carloads that have to go via NS at either end. No more worrying about its future.
Argument against it: Puts the route into foreign hands. Would a shortline operator want to stare down the grade every day? After the railfans ride it, would there be enough tourists to make a go of it? I doubt it.
Odds of it happening: 3 in 10.
So, that’s my take. Just before we posted this blog, to make sure nothing has changed, I asked NS spokesman Rob Chapman for an update on Saluda, and his reply was that nothing has changed. “As before, we have no plans to reopen the line but could if business conditions warranted,” he said. Here’s wishing Watco good luck with the Blue Ridge Southern. And to Saluda grade, rust in place, old friend, rust in place.
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