Travel report : North Carolina - 08-21-2009
| 08-21-09 - Charlotte to Aberdeen Today, we actually started the tour. The Charger had just been maintained and drove smooth as silk and so we could roam the roads without any worries.If one doesn´t use highways, it takes about three hours to go to Aberdeen. Hmmm, I could have spared all the work with route planning - Joern had his new toy with him - a cellphone with built-in GPS-navigation. Works pretty well. The weather was fine, too. At 35 centigrade, it was (and still is) quite cosy. Pretty good that the car is equipped with an aircondition... A short distance after Wingate on US-74 joern´s "track sensor" jumped into action: To left, he saw tracks with a string of cars (waggons) and behind that there was movement. Now, if something is moving behind parked cars, it can only be a spur. So I used the chance for a U-turn and put the pedal down (you don´t want to miss something). On the right I saw a small dirt road leading to a (private) grade crossing. Oh well, we are private... Joern took his camera and I snatched the video-cam. What happened then was somewhat discouraging: the engines uncoupled and left the beautiful (and long) hopper train standing where it was (grmpf). Then the engines ran around the train and passed us at normal track speed. No, I didn´t drink... The video cam is pretty small and lightweight, and I had to get accustomed to this little jewel. Moreover, it seems that the focus has difficulties to follow the zoom fast enough... | |
  | After having driven a little further down the road, I spotted a "Dollar Tree". That´s a shop where everything costs one dollar. This was an excellent source for filling up our provions. Then we drove on to Aberdeen on US-1. Just shortly before the town limit (7 miles), I booked our rooms at the Greenleafe Inn. |
  | Right after having checked in, we were off to Aberdeen to present ourselves to the managment of the Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad´s management. The manager in the office first was a bit surprised but when I pinted him to my email sent in early August (which had never been replied to), he immediately became very friendly and replied to our question for a photo permit:" Well, we don´t have any trains running today but sure, you can go anywhere you want and snap away." Well, we took him by the word :-)). To start with, we wandered around the office building and the station building in Aberdeen and then wanted to follow the track a bit in the direction of Fayetteville. |
| Also here, I could rely on Joern´s track sensor. He spotted the entrance to the shops. Spotting and turning right were one move since we also saw two beautiful diesel engines sitting in front of the shops. Of course, the area was fenced in... but we had permission to go wherever we wanted. So we parked the car, snatched our cams and waived a friendly ":Hello" to the men working on the engines. Obviously, these gentleman were glad to be interupted as they waived back and invited us in and in no time we were all tied up in having a nice little blarney over the differences between American and German diesels in particular and railroads in general. Of course, we did not forget to point our cameras at about every motive that looked worth to be captured. After about an hour or so the sewat poured down our necks and clothes and so we decided to seek shelter in our airconditioned car to follow the line further down. Not without the promise to return in the afternoon, though. | |
The GP7 and GP9 of the Rockfish & Aberdeen are definetely the crown jewels of this company. Both engines have been purchsed new from EMD way back in the 40´s and are since then in daily service. The logo-design also appelas to me... |
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| ... as does the neat station building which didn´t see a passenger train for a long time, of course. To make up for that, the shop guys told us that CSX virtually "wrapped" a freight train around the building. A freight train blasted through Aberdeen at about 70 mph. Unfortunately, the turnout (switch) was blocked by a stone or something else and wasn´t properly lined up. The first engine just made it over the turnout - the second one didn´t. The cars of the trains then were spread all around the station building... Luckily, no one was hurt in this incident, even the engineer escaped in time. |
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| Also located at Aberdeen is the Aberdeen, Carolina & Western Railway. We didn´t see much more than two nice engines (GP40-2), though. IF you are curious about the cabs of these engines : They are Canadian built and therefore have a safety-cab. | |
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| After some miles´ drive, Joern´s navi-system told us that the track would diverge too far from the road and so we called it a day. On the way back, we bought a sixpack for the guys at the Aberdeen engine shops and went back to them. Just as we arrived, on of the engines was about to go into the shed. So: out of the car, cams up, and: shoooot! After that, I gave Curtis (the foreman) the sixpack. The result - apart froma loud "Hey, this man knows what we need!" - was a guided tour through the shops. Great, just what we needed! Then Joern became big eyes when he saw the tools these guys work with. They all originate way back from the early 1900´s and still work flawlessly. Of course, we were also allowed to climb the locos and closely inspected them. A German engineer would certainly embrace the space in the cab but definitely not the missing aircondition ... At around 6 PM we went downtown Aberdeen. Somehow, we completely forgot that humans have to eat from time to time... After that, we were totally exhausted (mainly by the heat) and drove back to the motel. A bit of work (sorting the pictures of this day) and ready them for the web and that´s it for this day. Next morning, I woke up with the notebook on my side, running TV, and in a lit-up room... | |
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© 2009 by Erhard Baltrusch, Hamburg, Germany