The Kudzu Taketh Over! (Current Status of Saluda)

[Anonymous]

http://www.geocities.com/williamchague/Saluda_Grade

Here's a picture I snapped last Thursday of the current condition of the tracks about 3/4 of a mile west of Saluda, N.C., just out of Polk County and into Henderson. For those of you not aware of kudzu (Pueraria lobata) it is a vine native to China and Japan that was unfortunately brought here for use as a ground cover (and it does just that, swallowing everything in it's path, entire trees even, at up to 1 foot per day!) and has practically taken over the south and Norfolk Southern's tracks. Notice the rust on the rails too.

As for the status of Saluda (this is for Modelcar and everyone else of course), all of the rails are intact but have been cut farther south just past Landrum, S.C. and west of Saluda. This way NS doesn’t have to maintain the track in between. The crossing gate arms have been removed and the bulbs taken from the signal towers and warning lights at the grades covered with what appears to be something like a gray bag. I’ll try to get some more pictures up later.

Will trains run over Saluda again? I can only say this; it’s costing NS a lot more money and a lot more time than they had originally thought to re-route around Saluda. And we know how capitalistic corporations are in America, right? Keep your eyes open. [;)]

[JoeKoh]

Thanks for keeping us posted.RJ Corman took a branch line off the former NKP restored it and has factories now loading on it. Great to see old track being used again.
stay safe
Joe

[Modelcar]

....BRF: Thanks for sharing and updating us on Saluda....I hadn't thought of an onslaught of the "Kudzu"....taking over the RoW...! I am familiar with how that stuff grows and covers whole areas of anything...It can cover a whole area of forest and underbrush like a blanket with ease....so thick a man could hardly penetrate it...What a shame it is encroaching on the rail RoW...It won't take long to cover clear across the RoW as depicted in your photo...

I imagine these last few years the little town of Saluda has noticed a reducion of people stopping in to observe the unusual railroad situation through there....That is what brought me back in there to visit. Doing so we had lunch and stopped in at the M. A. Pace general store and bought several things....even had Mr. Pace send us some of his salad dressing, and just this week I gave his address to our neighbor friends as they wanted to contact him and see if it was still available.

I understand how difficult the operation of rail traffic up and down that area was and suppose one can't blame NS for wanting to leave it if possible, but as BRF relates in his above post the cost to do so may be even higher than using Saluda. I understand extreme safety practices were in place in the most recent times it was being utilized and evidently was being negotiated safely....even if it required the train to possibly double or even triple the "hill"....
BRF, do you happen to know if Mr. Pace of the General Store is still living....? March of 2001 was the last visit we made there.

Saluda has been a special railroad story for many years and it is just hard to believe it possibly has passed on into history. Would be nice [for us railroad fans], if it hasn't. Time will tell. Foot note: For fans unfamiliar with all of the above, look in Google and find a reprinted article from 1984 TRAINS depicting the rail operation on the "hill" including a generous supply of photos.

[Anonymous]

Modelcar: There's as many tourists if not more in Saluda now, though I doubt they're there to see the grade crest in town, they probably learn of it only after they arrive. The general store is still open and as far as I know he's still living, I haven't heard otherwise. I don't know how much time he spends in the store now though, haven't been along the street there for awhile, just driving through town to get some Green River BBQ (mmm, mmm good) or taking the scenic route to Hendersonville instead of I-26 filled with lowlanders who don't know what it's like to drive on a hill and a curve at the same time. Also get to follow the rails that way too, whether they're rusted or not!

[Modelcar]

Thanks for the additional info. I'm somewhat familiar with the driving in the "hills" as we grew up in western Pennsylvania.

[espeefoamer]

It's sad to see Saluda with rusty rails and kudzu taking over the ROW.[:(]I rode over Saluda behind N&W 611 in 1992.Diesels took most of the train up the grade and 611 brought up 5 cars.It was totally awesome.With it costing more,and taking longer than expected, maybe we will see trains on the grade once again.The grade was closed once before, and then reopened.it can happen again!
P.S. I thought I saw the kudzu growing across the tracks in the photo![;)]

[eastside]

Having spent my life in northern cities, I hardly knew about kudzu in the US. In Japan kuzu (Japanese spelling) is thought of as an ornamental herbal plant and is not easy to raise on a scale to make it economic to plant as an agricultural product. It’s also a source of high-end starch. I’ve heard it makes a delicious batter for fried chicken. Here’s the odd part: I have go to the local Japanese store to buy kuzu flour for tempura batter, it’s imported from Japan and costs $12 for 5 oz.

http://faculty.ucc.edu/biology-ombrello/POW/kudzu.htm
http://indianspringherbs.com/kudzu.htm

[Anonymous]

I rode up Saluda in October of 1994. Different view of things than I was used to. Unfortunately I was pulled up behind diesel power instead of N&W 611 from Melrose, but it was still a great experience anyway. Is 611 still at the Virginia transportation museum in Roanoke? I saw it there in the summer of '99 and I assume that it's still there and in good shape.

[JoeKoh]

QUOTE: Originally posted by Blue Ridge Front

I rode up Saluda in October of 1994. Different view of things than I was used to. Unfortunately I was pulled up behind diesel power instead of N&W 611 from Melrose, but it was still a great experience anyway. Is 611 still at the Virginia transportation museum in Roanoke? I saw it there in the summer of '99 and I assume that it's still there and in good shape.

Check the Virginia museum of Transportation web site.The 1218 is beside her now and they have opened the O Winston Link wing too.I do wi***hey(ns) would let her back out to run again[:(]
stay safe
joe

[Anonymous]

She does need to be taken off of her leash. Was Norfolk Southern making any profit off of those excursions? Or at least breaking even? I know that the tickets were fairly expensive if I remember right, my mom was in charge of that though[;)]. It couldn't be cheap to maintain a steam engine though. Just curious.

[JoeKoh]

Well they say it was the insurance man but I think we need to know the rest of the story.
stay safe
Joe

[locomutt]

I know about kudzu,give it an inch and it will take a mile,
in about a half hour.

Uh,I thought Saluda was a mainline set of tracks[?]
Why let it go to he##[?][:)]

[Modelcar]

...Saluda was a main line...with a long siding there at Saluda.

[cherokee woman]

QUOTE: Originally posted by JoeKoh

Well they say it was the insurance man but I think we need to know the rest of the story.
stay safe
Joe

[}:)]Hey Joe,

Do you want to get Paul Harvey on it[?] You know, his "Rest of the Story"
segments, don't you[?][:p]

[Modelcar]

...That would have been a ride to remember...up Saluda with 611 or 1218...Both of them were here in Muncie. 611 many times. Miss those trips. She would stay for about 3 or 4 hours so we really had a good time looking it over and then experience what it sounded like as it pulled it's almost 20 car train out....Have some great pic's. of it doing that.

[Anonymous]

There's a siding about 2 miles long through Saluda and to the west so they could assemble the train as it was brought up in pieces. Only 16 gondolas of woodchips could be brought up at a time behind 3 Dash-9s and the trains could be longer than 50 cars at times.

I remember that there was a big "uproar" when they decided to end the 611 excursions. I rallied up my second grade class at the time and wrote a letter to David Goode, CEO of Norfolk Southern, to try to convince them to continue the excursions. I guess we weren't cute enough to convince him to let 611 keep on hauling. At least we tried.

[Anonymous]

QUOTE: Originally posted by JoeKoh

QUOTE: Originally posted by Blue Ridge Front

I rode up Saluda in October of 1994. Different view of things than I was used to. Unfortunately I was pulled up behind diesel power instead of N&W 611 from Melrose, but it was still a great experience anyway. Is 611 still at the Virginia transportation museum in Roanoke? I saw it there in the summer of '99 and I assume that it's still there and in good shape.

Check the Virginia museum of Transportation web site.The 1218 is beside her now and they have opened the O Winston Link wing too.I do wi***hey(ns) would let her back out to run again[:(]
stay safe
joe

I hear they were going to brick 1218 into an extention behind the O Winston Link Museum sometime in the near future. any ideas on when?

Its sad to see Saluda with Kudzu. Maybe we should start harvesting that stuff and shipping it to the middle east. lol.

[Modelcar]

...Yea, that was too bad 611 was taken out of the special service as it was being used....Perhaps we'll not see it running out on excursions again, maybe never. 1218 was in Muncie here once and maybe it passed through once again but I missed out on it each time...I really wanted to see that one. I used to see similar sized engines many years ago hauling coal out of the area of Pennsylania we called home...Southwestern area and that one reminded me of that....

[rixflix]

Kudzu is a trip!!!!!!
Back in the 1980's we rode behind 1218 Alexandria-Lynchburg on an excursion, Two things stand out in memory:
how speedy an articulated can be and kudzu.
Somewhere south of Orange or Charlottesville the kudzu began. and folks it was strange. Sort of like being dropped into a Felix the Cat cartoon or a fi***ank. The stuff blanketed everything in sight. You could pick out abandoned and kudzu-ed farm buildings now and then amidst the trees it was depriving of photosynthesis. Kudzu wallpaper!!!
For miles there was nothing but blue sky and green kudzu.
I believe the plant was brought here to feed hogs down south as well as for ornamental purposes. Legend has it that Southern Railway trainmen were forbidden to pee on the right of way lest it encourage the encroaching vine. The Southern kept a weedless roadbed through there.
Didn't know you ranged as far south as Saluda Modelcar, Thanks for sharing.

Rixflix

[Modelcar]

...Rix, I try to hit it all when I'm near something of rail importance....We stopped at Saluda [off I-26], by just 2 miles, several times on way back from Florida in the Spring. I had been fascinated of that location for years...after reading of it, etc...So, being that close to it as we traveled, I had to look....and tried to see the action for several years but never lucked out to do so...The tracks were bare every time we stopped. But I'm still happy I had a chance to stand there in town and look down that grade and try to make make myself believe, yes...that really is a railroad dropping down at that angle.

[Train Guy 3]

I was told that Kudzu will grow a foot and a half on a hot humid day. What does the railroad use to kill it? All that stuff needs to be burnt up and the soil salted so it will never grow again.

Does anyone have the video of the 611 going up Saluda?

[RudyRockvilleMD]

We were visiting Ashville in May, 1995, and after touring The Biltmore Estate, my wife let me off the leash so I drove down to Saluda. Shortly after I arrived I walked into what looked like the former Southern Railway Station which was a gift shop or a general store which was situated in a row of stores on the main street.

I asked the manager of the store if he had seen any trains or if he knew when a train would come. He told me he had been in the store since 9 AM that morning, and he hadn't seen a train. Just as he finished talking my scanner came to life, and the dispatcher was talking to the crew of W 77 as it was climbing the grade. I rushed out of the store got on the bridge over the tracks, and I got there just in time to get a picture of the train passing through Saluda. I feel lucky that I got that picture then considering the line over Saluda is now closed.

[Allen Jenkins]

Thanks to Ole' E Z Bob & Harriet Lohene, at American Altavista Video, I'll have the grade, and the town, with all those wonderful people, like Mrs Eunice Pace, Jim Wrinn, and Norfolk & Western #611, and the Ret. Road Forman of Engines, to tell, and show how the Southern Railway System ("Artists, truly artists"..."yea, yea.") done what ever it takes to move freight over the Ashville & Spartenburg line, through "Saluda, America's Steepest Class 1 Grade!"(American Altavista Video Productions). The only major issue, is the rails, which take an act of Congress to remove, and the tree overgrowth. The kudzu, is an imported pest, which grows off one tapp root. Find that tapp root, and you can kill the vine, if you find the tapp root. If you don't kill it this year, try again next year. The Southern crews use to forbid the personal fertilizing the plant, on the roadbed, as that only stimulated the growth! Crews in the southeastern United States, commented that the plant would often attempt to secure a caboose, parked wilst a local switched the industries in an area! ACJ.

[Anonymous]

Most of the time kudzu is just cut back before it gets too close and in some cases it is sprayed (not sure what kind, have to be stout though.) I've never taken the time to do so, but I can imagine you can almost see the stuff grow! Like AJ said, if you get the root, you solve the problem. There's so much of it now that it's almost impossible. Groundhogs seem to take care of it fairly well, perhaps Norfolk Southern and the state of North Carolina just needs to breed and release thousands of groundhogs to take care of it![(-D]

Practically all of the pictures I have of Saluda I got by being in the right place at the right time with my camera. On the link below, the pictures taken in October 2001 at Melrose were taken when I heard the horn blowing at the grades in Tryon from my house and drove up to Melrose before the train got there. The pictures from Saluda were taken in July of 2001. My grandmother and I had been to Pearson's Falls near Melrose and heard the rumble and horn as the train departed. We hopped in the car and raced the train up Pearson Falls Road (a curvy, 1 1/2 lane gravel road) which parallels most of the grade and were able to get these pictures in Saluda. I got a quick lunch in at Green River BBQ there at the bridge after the first segment of the train was being left farther up the line and photographed it as it came back down to get some gondolas of woodchips. Then the trains stopped running before I got my driver's license and a scanner[:(] If they start running again, there won't be a weekend I won't spend racing up Saluda though.

http://www.geocities.com/williamchague/Saluda.html

[Modelcar]

...Photographing the visual severity of the grade at Saluda is not promising but I have managed to get some pretty decent ones in my several trips there...Found some good hotdogs there on main street at lunch time too.....

[garr]

Know how to plant kudzu? Throw the seeds on the ground and RUN!

One the main reasons reasearchers from Clemson Unsiversity first introduced kudzu to the US Southeast was for erosion control. After all these years, they still don't know if it works because it is too tough to look under the plants to check.

Jay

[Anonymous]

Sorry about the pictures not coming up. Haven't even had the pictures on there for 12 hours and geocities starts screwing up. Hopefully they'll come back in a bit.

The kudzu would have to work, the roots on that stuff are just too crazy for there not to be erosion control. There's a steep bank in Tryon that's about 50' high with a 70 degree slope that's completely covered in kudzu, and there hasn't been any problems with erosion on it.

[locomutt]

Those pictures were great,I'm sorry the R.R. has to do what they
are doing. That is a beautiful area of the country.

And I really liked garr's comment,that's really about the truth[:D]

[SALfan]

Sheep will definitely control kudzu, and I believe goats will. Back in the days of steam, he Atlanta, Birmingham and Coast used to control trackside weeds/brush/whatever with live steam from the locomotive. They had a flatcar with booms and wands mounted on it, and would just cook whatever was in reach.

[garr]

Blue Ridge Front,

The pictures were not up brefore my earlier post, they are very informative and good.

The part about not being able to check on the erosion control in the earlier post was in jest. Kudzu is very good at erosion control, its just a little too anxious to do it.

Jay