Sidetracked:  Restoring Passenger Rail Service to Western North Carolina 

  

If you want to know what’s really going on with passenger rail connections in western NC, then you need to attend Saluda Train Tales on July 19, 2019 at 7:00 p.m. to listen to Ray Rapp. He will be reviewing efforts to restore a passenger rail connection to Western North Carolina over the past 20 years. The presentation will include the latest initiative (2019) being pursued by the Western North Carolina Rail Committee, Inc. (WNCRC) to get the North Carolina Legislature to fund AMTRAK Thruway Bus Service between Asheville and Salisbury. This is to be the first step toward full restoration of passenger train service to WNC. 

  

Rapp currently serves as Chair of the WNCRC. The Committee was launched in 1999 but recently reorganized with a mission to improve and increase freight rail service, expand excursions and tourist trains and re-establish a passenger rail connection between Asheville and the North Carolina Railroad’s mainline in Salisbury. Rapp retired in 2009 after 32 years of service as Dean of Adult ACCESS Program at Mars Hill University where he continues to serve as an Adjunct Faculty Member and a contributor to the Rural Heritage Museum. 

  

A historian by background and training, he curated the 2015 rail exhibition at the Rural Heritage Museum, “How the West Was Won: Trains and the Transformation of Western North Carolina.” The exhibition toured the region in Marion, Old Fort and Saluda and is now on permanent display at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer. (Several of the exhibition’s panels have been reproduced and are on display in the Saluda Depot.) Rapp lectures regularly on the history of rails around the region and has taught classes on the subject at UNC-Asheville’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, the NC Center for the Advancement of Teaching, Mars Hill University and Blue Ridge Community College, among others. 

   

Saluda Train Tales is a free monthly event to educate the community in the importance of Saluda’s railroad history and the Saluda Grade. These events are at the Saluda Historic Depot, 32 W Main Street, Saluda, NC 28773. Doors open at 6:30. Presentation begin at 7:00 p.m. Events are free. Saluda Train Tales is exclusively sponsored by the Polk County Community Foundation.   

  

Submitted by Cathy Jackson