Nostalgia & History > Southern E8 units on excursion at SalisburyNC -- Aug 75

A Southern excursion special was run from Alexandria to Asheville,NC by way of Salisbury,NC carrying fans bound for the 1975 Knoxville NRHS Convention.
Temporarily borrowed from regular Southern Crescent service - 3 E8 units were used on the train. At Asheville 4501 would do the honors to Knoxville.
The train stopped in Salisbury for the night and here are the E units the next morning.
A few friends and myself had arrived about 1:00am on the Southern Crescent from New Orleans.

Some of you may remember this trip especially with the "adjustments" made to 6903.
A steam whistle was installed just for this trip. I always heard that Graham Claytor had insisted on it for this excursion.
It was certainly used on the way to Asheville. I enjoyed watching people race out from their houses expecting a steam engine and standing there with perplexed looks as diesels raced by.
I also like the old buildings and sidings to the right - all long gone.

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(3-4) A couple shots on the way to Asheville - don't know the locations.
Gary

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Wonderful photos. Thanks for taking and posting them.

Photo 4 is on Blue Ridge Mountain between Old Fort and Ridgecrest, but I don't know the exact location.

In photos 1 and 2, not all of the buildings are long-gone. The nearest one is still there, as is the farthest one, "Frick Company," which is now The Salisbury Emporium. The middle one is gone.

It would be have been wonderful to hear a steam whistle on the E8. The line is still there, and still in excellent condition, but trains don't "race by" any more. NS recently lowered the maximum speed from 45 mph to 25 mph, or Class 2, so it has to be inspected less and maintained to a lower standard. Looking at old employee timetables available online, the passenger speed was 70 mph between Salisbury and Old Fort and again from Ridgecrest to Asheville back in 1975, but there were dozens of curve restrictions, so there were few places the passenger train could actually operate at 70 mph. The timetable also shows that the passenger speed uphill from Old Fort to Ridgecrest was 30 mph (again, with several restrictions) but the maximum speed downhill was 25 mph.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/19/17 08:01 by knotch8.

Great photos. My favorite is number one because of the brick buildings and how the small curve in the track lets us better see the train.
Bob

knotch8 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Wonderful photos. Thanks for taking and posting
> them.
>
> Photo 4 is on Blue Ridge Mountain between Old Fort
> and Ridgecrest, but I don't know the exact
> location.
>
> In photos 1 and 2, not all of the buildings are
> long-gone. The nearest one is still there, as is
> the farthest one, "Frick Company," which is now
> The Salisbury Emporium. The middle one is gone.
>

Thanks - I'm glad a couple buildings survived.

Gary

What sleeping car is that painted in the Amtrak colors? BSB

The second (Amtrak colors) and third cars in the train are the Pend O'Reille River (Spelling?) owned by the Lake Shore NRHS chapter and Florida Surf, which I owned at the time. The Florida Surf had 4 Rmts 5 Bedrooms 1 Compartment and 4 Open Sections and was built by Pullman-Standard in December 1954 for the New Dixieland. It later ran on the South Wind and Gulf Wind. I bought it from L&N in 1972 and sold it in 1980.
-JH

Thanks for posting the great photos of that August 1975 NRHS excursion on the Southern in NC. I do not know how I missed chasing that train as I lived in Winston Salem at the time.
ALLEN

I rode a P42 excursion Spencer-Asheville-Spencer in 2009. Prevailing speed limit at that time was 45 mph except on the loops. Train took 4 hours 20 minutes each way, excluding the time between Spencer and the Asheville main. I believe the timetable for 3 & 4 in the mid-1970s called for 4 hours flat (with multiple stops). Around 2005 NS had said it could run Salisbury-Asheville in 3 hours 15 minutes if NCDOT would spend $135 million on track and signal improvements. I suspect that figure has doubled by now.

Thanks, ctillnc. I found this 2008 NS Piedmont Division timetable online http://www.multimodalways.org/docs/railroads/companies/NS/NS%20ETTs/NS%20Piedmont%20Div%20ETT%20%231%208-4-2008.pdf and it has the Asheville Line speeds on pages 115-116. It makes me think that the maximum speed has just recently been lowered to 45 mph, since you'll also see curves that are limited to 45 mph. But with all of those curves listed, there aren't many opportunities to operate at maximum speed.

I rode the trip from DC to Knoxville for the NRHS Convention, and return. I clearly remember the three clean and polished E8As and that Mr. Claytor's personal whistle had been plumbed to the steam generator output, and somehow rigged to be blown from the cab. There was a special riding mechanic on the second E-unit, whose sole task was to keep eyes on Mr. Claytor's steam whistle and make sure there was steam available for the whistle. He made it very clear that he understood his job depended on that whistle worked and was in place until he was relieved. Mr. and Mrs. Claytor rode the trip in his office car, right behind the power, and he was a gentleman and she was indeed a gracious lady. One time, as she walked thru our car, which was the Lake Shore Railway Historical Society's (LSRHS) Pend O'Reille River, she invited my 3-year old son to "have your Daddy bring you up to our car." Of course, I wasn't going to turn down an invitation to the Claytor's car, so after a proper interval, off we went. In the car, the Claytor's had a myna bird and my son was fascinated by the bird who had been trained to say "Southern serves the south" and "birds don't talk". I think the bird may have been named "Charlie" but I'm not 100% sure. Maybe someone else encountered the rail riding bird in his travels and can help out. Some place I have slides from the trip, and perhaps even one of Charlie. I'll have to dig through the boxes and scan them for posting.

One other memory of the trip, is that at the time, in order to haul a private car on Amtrak, the car had to be painted Amtrak, so the LSRHS had dutifully painted their sleeper platinum mist with the requisite blue and red stripe. The Pend O'Reille River had come out of Pittsburgh, probably on the National Limited to Harrisburg, and then was switched to the Washington section which consisted of a GG1 and a single coach, to travel down the Port Road along the Susquehanna River to Perryville, to join the Northeast Corridor, thru Baltimore and then down to DC, where we'd be placed on the excursion train The next day, as the excursion train pulled out of the tunnel under the Capital, the windows of the Amtrak offices at L'Enfant Plaza were packed as we went by. I would imagine that Mr. Claytor assured that the whistle was being blown, loudly and frequently. So out of Wasington Union Terminal we rolled, through the tunnel and past L'Enfant Plaza on the Southern RR excursion train, we were in an Amtrak-painted sleeper second out, behind Claytor's office car. It caused quite a stir and I was told later that the Amtrak car distribution people were grilled as to how the Southern managed to get an Amtrak sleeper for the train.

Thanks for posting the pictures and reminding me of a great trip. I'll see if I can find some more pictures, and post some of them if the scans turnout.

G.F.Payne
B'more, MD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/21/17 05:14 by SamRae.

SamRae Wrote:
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> Thanks for posting the pictures and reminding me
> of a great trip. I'll see if I can find some more
> pictures, and post some of them if the scans
> turnout.
>
> G.F.Payne
> B'more, MD

Thanks.
Great story on the trip and car.
It was a fun trip and a great convention.
I'm working on some shots of the 4501 at Asheville (where I saw Mr. Claytor).
I will look forward to your pictures of the trip.

Gary