Eastern Railroad Discussion > SAL Dillon - Charleston

What runs on the former SAL between Dillon and Charleston, SC? I was along much of the line this week and it looked like it was fairly active, based on the shine on the rails. In addition, it seemed to be well maintained.

Thanks,

NYSWSD70M

The segment from Dillon to Andrews sees a decent amount of traffic, with a pair of line freights Q484/485 (Hamlet to Andrews) as well as coal trains heading for Pennyroyal, near Georgetown.

South of Andrews, it's local service only, but some pretty big locals. There is a large Nucor mill on the SC Public Railways' East Cooper & Berkeley, to which CSX has overhead rights. This is served by F766 if I remember the symbol correctly. Bullsheet shows that as Andrews to Cordesville, so should be right.

Andrews to Charleston no longer has through service, but is served by overlapping locals, if you will. F746 runs as a turn from Charleston to State Jct. (EC&B interchange is here), so cars could be swapped between locals to go through. I do not know if this is done or not.

There are also numerous locals based out of Andrews that work to Georgetown and elsewhere on the line. I am very surprised that CSX has not dumped this line, at least south of State Jct. or even Andrews. The way they currently run out of Charleston, they could easily spin this segment off to the EC&B and just let them come to Charleston to pick up their interchange. I say this not because I want to CSX shed more trackage and eliminate more jobs, but just for the fact that they've recently spun off much busier trackage than this to shortlines.

Mike Derrick
http://www.shortlinesusa.com

Thanks for the info. As I said in my previous post, the shine on the rails indicated more traffic than what I expected to see. It looks like it is in good enough shape that it could handle a detour in a pinch.

Thanks again,

NYSWSD70M