The Saluda Grade is a landmark, and has always been a railfan favorite, but it has also always been a highly impractical piece of railroad. (Perhaps that is precisely why it is a railfan favorite.) If there is one former mainline route in the state that deserves the rail-trail treatment, this is it.
6 Likes
Siemens has started construction for the Lexington rolling stock facility. Estimated to begin production in Q4 of '24.
It’s located in Lexington Industrial Park on the west side of town.
12 Likes
@dtraleigh
Please correct me if this is not correct place to add this update, thank you!
And a cool map…
15 Likes
Does one of the resident rail nerds (I mean that endearingly) know what this service would look like?
1 Like
I already love the potential design for the Wilmington station as the rail bed is already below street level. Something like the look of a modern High Point station, but as a terminus. Unlikely, but it would be nice if arrivals in Selma were timed with northbound trains and vice versa. Perhaps more likely with the S-line in Raleigh. I’m really dying for train service here in New Bern, but this is the logical first step.
7 Likes
Gonna add this here in an effort to keep my only active topic alive 
13 Likes
Some news buried in there:
- Winston-Salem to Raleigh: This advances Winston-Greensboro over Winston-High Point as the preferred intercity link within the Triad. Both were always dashed lines on maps.
- Fayetteville to Raleigh: Selects the west route via Fuquay vs. the east route via Selma. 2020 study here
- Charlotte to DC/ATL/Kings Mountain: no news, but these have been part of the federally designated SEHSR corridor since forever (OK, 2002 at the federal level but NCDOT has been studying it since the mid-1990s). Not sure why Kings Mountain gets a shoutout?
Potentially also notable what wasn’t selected:
- Greenville
- Morehead City
- Hamlet (via Southern Pines, Sanford)
- W-S to Charlotte (via High Point)
- Weldon (Roanoke Rapids) via S-Line
10 Likes
I’m sorry, what is this for? These are the corridors that they’re going to study further? $3.5M doesn’t seem like it’s going to do much these days.
2 Likes
Thinking big(ger) picture, I would think Greensboro-WS should be the no-brainer next rail link in the Triad. From there extend to Statesville, then Mooresville, then down to Charlotte (hopefully in conjunction with regional rail between Mooresville and Charlotte). Linking WS to Statesville would also make the Asheville to Salisbury line more useful as it would be less indirect going to Asheville by rail from both Charlotte and GSO/WS. At some point WS-High Point should happen, but I feel like it wouldn’t be nearly as immediately regionally useful as WS-Greensboro especially considering the potential extensions out of WS.
Plus it would help me take train trips to Winston instead of just Greensboro for day drinking. Which really is the important thing…
5 Likes
It would also be less direct using existing tracks, requiring a route that goes nearly all the way into Greensboro before making a sharp turn southwest toward High Point. Same for the tracks heading south to Lexington, which may require additional work at the NCRR junction to accommodate Winston-HP trains.
1 Like
I think it’s cool, for the Raleigh to Fayetteville, they highlight with the West route they’ll build a station at the big Wake Tech campus out off 401.
6 Likes
I’m actually pretty surprised that they selected the western option, seems like it had a lot more operational/infrastructure hurdles identified in the report.
1 Like
This may have been mentioned in another thread, but I was reading that the first part of the S Line from Raleigh to Richmond (which just got $1 billion for construction) is apparently going to be extending the Piedmont route from downtown Raleigh up to Wake Forest. That would be fantastic. I absolutely hate that drive, especially if I’m going brewery hopping. Having a train that could take me essentially home to downtown Cary would rock.
11 Likes
Yes, but it will only come twice a day… 
I got stuck for an extra day on the Med b/c the trains only came twice a day. Super early or super late. No other options in between.
Lol I assume by the time it opens it’ll have semi frequent trains. I hope!
The WS-“Statesville”-Mooresville-Charlotte corridor just doesn’t make much sense as an intercity passenger corridor. It doesn’t actually even hit Statesville, it only hits Barber which is about 15 miles east of Statesville proper.
While this may have been the route Southern mostly used to reach Winston-Salem from the west back in the day, it just doesn’t hit population centers like the NCRR does. In addition, it’s not been maintained and steadily upgraded, and has rather been allowed to languish into disrepair as an infrequently-used branch line.
The WSSB to Lexington, and then the NCRR from there through Salisbury, Kannapolis, and Charlotte would make for a much better route given today’s rail realities and the geography of our state’s population distribution.
Commuter Rail from Charlotte to Mooresville definitely makes sense. Maybe some day Winston Salem to Clemmons might make sense. But again, as an intercity passenger corridor - probably not.
4 Likes
Yes it would.
It would also be great for wake forest commuters that just learned NCDOT is cancelling (delaying?) the US1 improvements. That would be a bummer of a daily commute, and obviously thousands of people do it every day
6 Likes
I’m still digging through docs trying to parse this one out, but my initial assumption is that Kings Mountain would be an extension of the Piedmont. That means that Gastonia, the 13th-largest city in North Carolina and Charlotte’s 2nd-largest suburb, goes from two trains in the middle of the night to regular service throughout the day. That corridor also passes right through the middle downtown Belmont, whose historic depot is still intact and currently houses retail and dining. And, if NCDOT is feeling extra creative, they could also add a stop at the airport, which would be a pretty big deal.
I think Kings Mountain in particular gets a shoutout because it’s the last large town the corridor passes through before arriving at the border, and, let’s be real, South Carolina has virtually zero interest in taking the initiative on rail projects. NCDOT is just working with what they have and selecting a logical terminus.
On a slightly different note (and a bit less exclusive to North Carolina), here’s a full map of all corridors that are receiving funding today, which I found here:
Keep in mind that most of these corridor grants are for planning studies; actual capital projects (such as ROW acquisition and construction funding for the Raleigh-Wake Forest portion of the S-Line) are summarized in greater detail in this document.
11 Likes