The Streets of Fayetteville - Part 1
Fayetteville, the seat of Cumberland County North Carolina is most widely known as the home of the US Army’s Fort Bragg. The city itself is larger than expected with a population of around 210,000 but has a reputation as kind of a tough town. It is so rough that soldiers stationed on post are advised to avoid downtown “Fayette-nam” as it’s derisively referenced. But to the visiting railfan willing to take a look around the city has a surprisingly lot to offer. And while I wouldn’t call it a particularly inviting place, I in no way felt ill at ease or unsafe photographing in town.
By far the dominant railroad in town is CSXT with their south end subdivision, the former Atlantic Coast Line main, seeing the passage of dozens of daily freight trains and four daily Amtrak trains on an 11 mile stretch of double track through the city.
The city is also served by the Norfolk Southern that arrives tri-weekly on a 43 mile branch from Fuquay-Varina that was an ORIGINAL pre-1974 Norfolk Southern.
And those roads both interchange with the famous and always independent shortline Aberdeen and Rockfish that calls Fayetteville the eastern endpoint of its 47 mile route.
CSXT also operates two branchlines out of the city, both of which are remaining stubs of the one time Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railroad dating from the 1880s. That Atlantic Coast Line came to own the Sanford to Wilmington Route by 1900 and it would remain as a thru route into the 1970s.
Abandoned piecemeal by the SCL (which found itself with five lines radiating from that coastal city) all that remains of the line today is a stub northeast about 8 miles to Fort Jct. (that sees regular military trains interchanged with the US Army’s Cape Fear Railroad on Ft. Bragg.) and east 7 miles to Vander. At this east end a long lead continues down to the Cape Fear River about 4 more miles to reach the giant DAK Americas plastic plant.
But at the time I knew none of that and had no idea what this strange line was running for nearly a mile right down the middle of four lane Russell Street, Fayetteville’s main downtown thoroughfare.
What threw me for even more of a loop at first was the NS painted locomotive. But I quickly realized it was a leaser FURX 5528, a rebuilt and chop nosed GP38-2 built as a SOU 2730 in Sept. 1969 and on lease to CSXT.
This was a totally unexpected surprise and didn’t offer much chance to shoot, but I did have to grab one shot looking out the windshield east down Russell St as the local returns west on the Vander spur with a classic old El Camino tooling down the road.
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Friday May 29, 2015.
The Streets of Fayetteville - Part 1
Fayetteville, the seat of Cumberland County North Carolina is most widely known as the home of the US Army’s Fort Bragg. The city itself is larger than expected with a population of around 210,000 but has a reputation as kind of a tough town. It is so rough that soldiers stationed on post are advised to avoid downtown “Fayette-nam” as it’s derisively referenced. But to the visiting railfan willing to take a look around the city has a surprisingly lot to offer. And while I wouldn’t call it a particularly inviting place, I in no way felt ill at ease or unsafe photographing in town.
By far the dominant railroad in town is CSXT with their south end subdivision, the former Atlantic Coast Line main, seeing the passage of dozens of daily freight trains and four daily Amtrak trains on an 11 mile stretch of double track through the city.
The city is also served by the Norfolk Southern that arrives tri-weekly on a 43 mile branch from Fuquay-Varina that was an ORIGINAL pre-1974 Norfolk Southern.
And those roads both interchange with the famous and always independent shortline Aberdeen and Rockfish that calls Fayetteville the eastern endpoint of its 47 mile route.
CSXT also operates two branchlines out of the city, both of which are remaining stubs of the one time Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railroad dating from the 1880s. That Atlantic Coast Line came to own the Sanford to Wilmington Route by 1900 and it would remain as a thru route into the 1970s.
Abandoned piecemeal by the SCL (which found itself with five lines radiating from that coastal city) all that remains of the line today is a stub northeast about 8 miles to Fort Jct. (that sees regular military trains interchanged with the US Army’s Cape Fear Railroad on Ft. Bragg.) and east 7 miles to Vander. At this east end a long lead continues down to the Cape Fear River about 4 more miles to reach the giant DAK Americas plastic plant.
But at the time I knew none of that and had no idea what this strange line was running for nearly a mile right down the middle of four lane Russell Street, Fayetteville’s main downtown thoroughfare.
What threw me for even more of a loop at first was the NS painted locomotive. But I quickly realized it was a leaser FURX 5528, a rebuilt and chop nosed GP38-2 built as a SOU 2730 in Sept. 1969 and on lease to CSXT.
This was a totally unexpected surprise and didn’t offer much chance to shoot, but I did have to grab one shot looking out the windshield east down Russell St as the local returns west on the Vander spur with a classic old El Camino tooling down the road.
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Friday May 29, 2015.