With the news just out that modern day Norfolk Southern is selling a surving piece of the original historic Norfolk Southern to RJ Corman I thought I'd share another shot from the one day I spent on part of the line.
If you missed the news I'm talking about here's the link: www. I'm glad I shot this when I did, and I'd love to go back for some nice looking red Corman units in the street someday. The city itself is larger than expected with a population of around , but has a reputation as kind of a tough town. But to the visiting railfan willing to take a look around the city has a surprisingly lot to offer. 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.
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. This remarkable street running is made even more special by story behind it, since prior to this trip none of us even knew it existed. One evening while we were hanging out at the Salisbury depot after the big celebration that had brought us to Carolina we ran into a long time regular local fan named John who was an ex original Norfolk Southern pre engineer.
He told us about the street running on a surviving portion of the original NS down in Fayetteville that the modern NS still serves with tri weekly with local out of Varina. Being that Friday was our day that we planned to head off to hunt the Aberdeen and Rockfish anyway we crossed our fingers and headed out.
Low and behold luck was with us, as shortly after we arrived in Fayetteville we heard NS E25 the symbol for the branchline local crackle on the radio and we knew we were in luck. In this view we see the arriving southbound train curling out into traffic just north of the Cumberland St.
