If I had to accept Ralph to get it built, Ralph is my favorite! 
1 Like
Ralph probably would work better for alley parallel to Glenwood. lol
4 Likes
So, what is old becomes new…
From: Craig Zeenii on Olde Raleigh NC
The cut-off would functionally reproduce how the original NS accessed Raleigh around 1900 or so, before the line across Boylan was built by the NS in 1912/13.
Page 25 of Prince’s NS book says that when the original NS first came to south Raleigh (as NS predecessor road Raleigh & Southport) from Varina about 100 years ago that it got to Raleigh via “three miles of trackage rights obtained over the Southern Rwy from Caraleigh into Raleigh.”
This connection/rights ended when the NS built to Boylan…there is a “Boylan under construction” photo dated 1912 in Gilbert & Jefferys’ “Crossties Through Carolina”.
[Zeenii thought that the] 1914 Sanborn shows it pretty clearly https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/ncmaps/id/9084
(Map Section # 45 suggests it, but does not confirm it)
Part of that connection’s right of way can still be seen from I-40 just west of South Saunders St but before going under the NS…on the right as one heads west on 40. No idea if this is true or not…I know what that’s referring to and it seems plausible.
No map. But, a clearer mention of the 3.0 mile trackage agreement for the Raleigh & Southport RR over the NCRR/SOU.
https://www.carolana.com/NC/Transportation/railroads/nc_rrs_raleigh_southport.html
This article from The Charlotte News - 11/21/1911 goes in to the details of Norfolk Southern knitting things together in Raleigh.
1 Like
I propose we add this to The Artery.
11 Likes
good idea, but I will need the motorized option.
2 Likes
As long as everyone travels in the same direction…
3 Likes
literally 2 days ago, a friend of mine in California sent me a video of him riding this thing. I had never heard of it before then, and now I see it twice in one week!
2 Likes
Brand new to Raleigh - first time walking around downtown yesterday and my first thought was “man that rail line would make a great path”. Coming from Atlanta and being a Transportation Engineer and seeing the success of the beltline got me thinking. Then I came across the amazing idea here.
If only railroads weren’t the hardest jerks to work with on Earth…
A couple of more ideas to bonce off.
Railroads require 15’ of Right of Way on either side of the track.
There looks to be about 90’ of space on the 2 track part between Hillsborough and Jones. If you bring that stretch down to a single track, it would be tight but feasible. Again, railroads are nearly impossible to bargain with though.
My thinking is to take that stretch where the Railroad is depressed there and cap it and have the trail and greenspace over the track from around RUS to where the tracks split at Jones Street. North of there if the RR company could be bargained to use only the east track the greenway could follow the current west track and create a true urban greenway feel that would certainly further spur development in the area.
Jumping back to the south, again eliminating the western track leaves us with a huge space to develop an urban park similar to Old 4th Ward Park along the beltline in Atlanta.
It gets a bit stick again to the south of that. A pedestrian bridge over the railyard would be necessary but then it does look like there could be space to straddle the tracks as it dives SW through the edge of downtown.
I’m sure this is all a pipe dream but one that would be a transformative being for Downtown Raleigh. And wonderful presentation, Owen.
18 Likes
Welcome Raleigh and this board @atl_transplant!! Capping that part of the tracks would be pretty awesome, if someone comes up with the money. I think as you look around you’ll find we spend a lot of time taking about the railroads, especially in downtown. You are in good company here as there are many transportation folks who participate here. I am just a simple historian. Again, welcome to the community!
3 Likes
Thanks!
I am not a transportation engineer myself and definitely appreciate any feedback from a professional.
I would absolutely not want to do anything to diminish rail capacity in any way. I do see an opportunity to consolidate the 5 railroad corridors radiating out from donwtown into three, but unlike the Atlanta Beltline, some of the corridors in question here are mainline railroads and not seldom used industrial connections. Just eliminating tracks without consideration for conserving capacity is probably unwise.
The way I see it, given the need for high speed rail and commuter rail, along with some amount of freight traffic, leaving room for less than 4 tracks outbound from the wye in any of the three main directions would be short sighted. NCRR’s published planning documents actually call for leaving room for six tracks westbound from downtown, between the downtown Raleigh wye and Cary, and four to the southeast. Based on that, I figure that four to the north should also be sufficient.
I figured that, assuming good faith negotiations, a 4 track corridor would be 75’ wide. 15’ between track centers, and 15’ from the outermost track to the edge of the ROW. These dimensions are not generous but they are adequate given physical constraints and assuming railroads will be relatively cooperative. The Philadelphia center city connection does this with 15’ track centers on a viaduct less than 70’ wide. I think you’re right about 90’ being the total minimum clear width through the pinch point from roughly Jones to Hillsborough.
Given the changes that PSR (Precision Scheduled Railroading) are bringing to the industry, and that Class 1s are looking to offload lightly used branches, there may be a window where it could be possible to bring all the corridors through downtown Raleigh under public ownership, and under such a scenario, railroad intransigence might diminish as a concern.
Nevertheless, even assuming public ownership and good faith negotiation, getting an agreement and coming up with an engineering design to fit a pedestrian path under those bridges along with four railroad tracks would be a stretch. If that’s not possible, I agree a cap should be considered. But if that’s not possible or costs are prohibitive, ending the path at Jones would be a reasonable option. The grade crossing at Jones is planned to be closed and replaced with a pedestrian grade separation (hopefully a tunnel under the tracks), and the stubs of Jones Street could serve as a suitable endpoint.
9 Likes
Welcome to Raleigh and this dtraleigh community @atl_transplant !
Folks, this is a great example of how to participate in these topics. Bring your fresh and provocative ideas and let’s discuss them and see if we can make some of them happen. I look forward to many more inspiring posts and topics from you in the coming days, weeks, months and years.
11 Likes
Thanks for the welcome everyone!
I couldn’t contain myself and had to mock up a little design in Microstation.
It would be tough and would require a lot of cooperation for the railroad but I think it could work one day if the right investors were on board.
16 Likes
Welcome to our site! It’s nice to see another engineer on here (and someone actually in the transit industry!!) 
Out of curiosity…
-
What made you want to cut along the western (southern?) edge of the NCRR RoW to connect to Dix Park when your design assumptions also let you play with the rail line bisecting Dix Park?
-
Does Microstation also let you play around with structural engineering details? For example, could you look at how to work with the local terrain or how much room would you have for SEHSR platforms, do or cost-benefit analyses deriving from county GIS data like how much RoW acquisitions could cost? (I’m not asking you to do that since that’s obviously work you could charge people serious money to do, but I’m just wondering if the app you’re using lets you.)
Also, FYI: we have specific threads for The Fairweather and the extension of West St. south of Union Station, so you may find that interesting, too, if you’d like some more context.
4 Likes
Hey! I totally overlooked that western line somehow! That’d be an even better connection. I think my thinking was to try to keep as much of the trail as close to the downtown core as possible. Since this is just a pipe dream, we could have an Eastern and Western flank of the trail.
I believe they do have a “Civil 3D” component of Microstation that would allow this. I haven’t had any experience with Civil 3D though since most of my work is on the Traffic Analysis / Conceptual design side but it’s definitely something I could explore.
7 Likes
Here is a map that I drew up in Google maps of a possible plan for all this.
Green is the trail route (20’ wide).
Yellow is the relocated rail route that I would propose (4 tracks, 75’ wide). This is mostly based off of NCDOT’s NC5 alternative for the Southeast High Speed Rail to Richmond, Virginia, except…
Orange is the part of the high speed rail route proposed by NCDOT that I don’t like because it has those extra, apparently unnecessary, zigzags.
Purple is the Norfolk Southern route that could be abandoned and probably be converted for a trail (rail line) and redevelopment (yard)
Red is the CSX route that could also be abandoned and probably converted into streets (rail line) and redevelopment (yard)
I specifically skipped drawing a route through the wye for the trail, because it’s so tight and there’s so many uncertainties, namely where the platform for the High Speed Rail line will go.
If you scroll to the south, you’ll see a “belt line” that connects the Norfolk Southern route to Fuquay-Varina and Fayeteville, over to the NCRR mainline, somewhere between Raleigh and Garner.
I did my best to make this pretty realistic. Curves north of Downtown have 3/4 mile radius, for example, which should be good for 100+mph. But doing things like curve spirals in Google Maps is not feasible. I’ve played around with drawing this up in AutoCAD Civil3d, but not being a professional, I’m just not very proficient at it, and I don’t have enough free time to learn.
A few other things to note are that it seems negotiations for NCDOT to purchase the CSX (red) route are well underway so there actually is some momentum buliding behind doing some of this.
9 Likes
Good stuff!
If I’m looking at this link right - https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/15310/SEHSR_Richmond-Raleigh_Tier-II_FEIS_App_R_02_Detailed_maps.pdf
they’re creating new track north of Jones St and planning to knock out those businesses and leaving the original corridor intact?
1 Like
All the pages of the full final tier II EIS can be found here:
https://connect.ncdot.gov/resources/Rail-Division-Resources/Documents/Forms/TierIIFEIS.aspx
The portion relevant to downtown Raleigh is here:
3 Likes
Thanks! Wow that’s pretty interesting alignments they have going on there. Definitely would be cool to acquire those NS lines.
2 Likes
