(The following article by Vicki Hyman was posted on the Raleigh News & Observer’s website on June 23.)
RALEIGH, N.C. — Twenty years ago, the trains stopped running between Norlina, north of Henderson, and Petersburg, Va. The owner of freight rail line, CSX, considered it of so little value at the time that it ripped up the railroad tracks and tore down the train signals.
But within a few years, North Carolina and Virginia officials expect trains to once again rumble through the small towns, fields and backwoods of the Piedmont. The largely abandoned rail corridor between Raleigh and Petersburg is essential to a $2.6 billion plan to create high-speed passenger rail service between Charlotte and Washington and to make train travel a viable alternative to driving or flying.
Currently, Amtrak trains take a roundabout route from Petersburg to Raleigh via Rocky Mount, Wilson and Selma at speeds of up to 79 mph.
By sending up to 110-mph trains along the old CSX rail line, as well as making other improvements along the entire route, the two states could trim the now nine-hour-plus trip to six hours by 2010.
Last year, federal regulators signed off on the general path for high-speed rail, including the more direct route from Petersburg to Raleigh via Norlina and Henderson.
Now state officials are refining the corridor between Raleigh and Petersburg, drawing up engineering plans and studying possible impacts on communities, wetlands and historic properties along the 138-mile stretch.
Officials will host workshops starting Tuesday along the stretch, answering questions and listening to concerns about the project.
Communities along the rail line have been supportive of the plan so far. Local officials believe passenger trains will bring a little life to their towns and perhaps spur some economic development if the project revives freight service through the area.
“We really want to make sure it stops here,” said Henderson City Council member Ernest Terry. “The train was really a part of this community.”
The two states also have to come up with an agreement to use the corridor with Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX, which still owns the line. They are also lobbying the federal government for money, but there is currently no dedicated funding for such a major scale of railroad improvements.
Meanwhile, North Carolina is slowly improving speeds along the existing Amtrak route by lengthening passing sidings, straightening and redesigning curves, and installing a computerized train-control system, similar to the federal air traffic-control system.
North Carolina has trimmed 15 minutes from the trip between Raleigh and Charlotte, which now takes three hours and 30 minutes. Within a year, further improvements will trim an additional 20 minutes. Ridership will climb on the state-subsidized train as the minutes drop off the trip, said Pat Simmons, director of the state Department of Transportation’s rail division.
“We think there’s magic in public response when we get below the three-hour mark,” he said.