State

Early Railroad Building Or. Gudger roininis<*«vs of .some of llie things lio san during' (lie period when railroads were first being built und operated iuto Western Til К picture of "A Train of Loup Ago” publi-liod in Tin: Statk for Xovcmlicr is (lie photograph of ,i train miii'li older tlinn most renders of thin magazine imagine. It has evoked many memories of the build¬ ing of the Western North Carolina Railroad west of Swaiiiianon tunnel in the late 1870s and in the 1880». Per¬ haps these reminiscence* may interest the readers of Tin: Statk. In the summer of 1878, a bare¬ footed boy went from Waynosville to railhead at Henry Station, the west¬ ern portal of Swannanoa Tunnel. The trip was made with some wagoners hauling good* to and from that point. There, for the first time. I saw the •‘railroad." a magnified)! ( locomo¬ tive (about a- big as the tender of a modern freight engine of a heavy type) and a train of ears (small wooden things, heated by coal stoves and lighted by oil lillllp*). The engi¬ neer, seeing this green hoy looking at his engine, let of! a -brill howl from hie whistle und I went up in the air fully two feet. When back on terra firtna, looked around, boy-like, to see if any one had noticed how startle»! I was. American Type Locomotive Hut the locomotive that blew that blast was not like that shown in the picture which was puhli-hed recently in Tn к Statk. It was of the ordinary “American type" with four drivers (two on a side) with the fire-box swung between them, and a four- wheeled pony truck in front under the fore-end, eurrying the cylinders and .smokestack. A counterpart of this infant engine had been dis¬ mantled at the station, hauled over and through Swannnnon Gap by oxen, reassembled and put to work on the construction line west of the tunnel. It too was an American type. The “railroad" reached Asheville about 1880. and I -aw the early train- drawn by such engine* ami eotn|K>sed of such cars as I have noted. Inci¬ dentally I have seen three railway stations in Asheville other than the present one, am! each of the three has been erected on a different site. \orth ('nrnliun territory «I/ E. W. GLIIGEIt I miw the Murphy branch built from Asheville west. In those days I knew some of the contractors, superin¬ tendents and foremen who supervised the actual building. I have wa!ko»l the "right of way" from Pigeon River (Canton) to three mile* below Dark Ridge trestle west of Balsam Cap, where in those days a man was killed nearly every week by runaway engines. Those engines had steam (not compressed-air) brakes, and on those grades I sometimes .‘11)0 feet to a mile) the engineers frequently could not hold their trains. The First Train Ride Railhead on the Murphy branch was Pigeon River (now Canton) about 1882 mi. | | took my fir*t ride on a train — getting iuto the ear un hour ahead of time to be sure that the train would not leave me wheu it pulled out. In 1883, on my way to college, I rode on the train from Pigeon River through Marshall to Paint Rock and Wolf Ctek. Тонн., where passenger* were taken over hv the old Hast Tenn.. Va. and Ga. Rail¬ way. The primitive train was made up of small wooden ear*, and were drawn by a pocket-sized American type loco¬ motive. Railroading ami railroad travel in the trains | have spoken of wort* rather dangerous undertaking*. On the “Dnektown Branch" as it was called, the rails were liuht 18-2» foot sections held together b\ '‘chairs" (not “fish plate-") and boll'. Tie- road be»l wa» of raw earth, the ties were slightly flattened oak poles (I have also seen walnut used), and the trestles were built <*f |Kile> with the bark still on them. On such tracks and road beds, the light engines could not pull a whole train up the “Pigeon Grade” east of Cnntou, and lip and through the "Mingus «-lit" west of Canton. The trains were cut in two at the bottom of the hill, one half carried up tin- grade, then the engine went Iwiek after the other half. Fortunate were the passengers when the little locomotive managed to stagger up to Pigeon River at the tir-t effort. Then at the “Devil’s Dip" just east of Hominy Station, when an engineer going ea-t or west, had climbed the grade in the cut, he called out “Brakes off!" and rolled down by gravity. Then near the bottom. o|x-iiiug her up wide, be prayed that, carried by momentum and aided by steam lie might make the top of the next hill. Some Steep Grades Such steep grade.-, a- that of Balsam Gap we.-t of Waynesville, when looking down hill is like looking from the ridge of a house down the «lope of a roof, wore terror*. On such track* and on such grade-, engineer*, supplied only with -team broke * on the engines and only hand broke- un the cars, had great difficulty in holding their trains. Wreck* and death- wen- not uncommon. Kngi- ncers and conductors had f» !»• MKX t«* get their train- over their runs. That “there were giant, in tlio-.- days" is certainly true of men like Capt. -lack Edward* «if whom I have written elsewhere. But small and primitive as wen engines and train-» they were never such as that which was pictured in Тик Statk and alleged to have run “regularly through Mar-hull in I"!*." From -January to September, 1800, I lived at and Worked in a sawmill on lower Sandy Mtl-ll Creek six miles west of Marshall. Many of my week-ends were s|ient with kins- people in Marshall. Tim train- passed right iu front of my host.- hou-< - Marshall is built along n river at tin- bottom of a canyon. The trains were of the type described by me. but not that shown in the picture. The picture referred t<» is of an engine and ear- of Js.40 and the elm I Сои/ f nuni nn /м/./е t ivml i/.sir) 3