Southern Railway at Saluda NC

[@JawTooth]

I got married the very next day after this video was made and am still married. Also, when this video was made, I lived in Lexington Ky right next to the Southern mainline and I could watch trains out my living room window and my bedroom window. Miss those days.

[@CCrailroad]

yo my parents were married a week after the last train was on saluda

[@jamesrussell6123]

I wouldn't mind living beside the railroad tracks

[@ConrailSD80MAC]

DPU, I see you!

[@JawTooth]

@@ConrailSD80MAC Lol, wow this is an old comment! How did you find this ? lol

[@6000geac]

Oh how I do miss seeing EMD SD40-2's running long hood forward on the Southern, use to watch them all day long climbing Erlanger Hill on the old CNO&TP.

[@williamharvey9702]

thank you gretta ,Southern still rules my heart .I grew up in Mississippi with a rail 140 feet from my bedroom window .the sound would metal clinck me into a good deep sleep in late evening every night .I never go long without a beautiful railroad memory chugging through my mind .I live in central N.Carolina now and I am close enough to the Southern line that I hear the same train air horns that I heard as a young country hick other than the pretty cotton we have here its the oldest memory I can recall .long live the Southern R R .long live good memories of youth .

[@TK-ec5bv]

Lovely LOUD Nathan P5 horns....the sound of the Southern Railway.

[@superdad2150]

Who the hell would give an awesome Saluda grade video like this a thumbs down? Screw those people

[@brianbooher7318]

Someone who's mother should have drownded the stupid bastard child at birth but instead let it live so they could cut their man parts off an have unisex bathrooms .that's what kinda person would give this a thumbs down

[@LotusbandicootRR]

Crazy how much the horn on that second train sounds like a K5LLA.

[@Cristianoefc]

There's is nothing better than Southern Railway GM's screaming at Saluda! Keep'em coming my friend!

[@houstonrailfanTX]

Yeah there is.. It's called a U-Boat hitting this grade

[@manjukumari1855]

@@houstonrailfanTX c xxvi

[@Tom-Lahaye]

That's some unique footage, like you described consumer video equipment was very cumbersome in the early days, with a full size video tape deck, a camera and often a separate battery pack, you had to haul 20-30lb of equipment around. Besides that this kit was ridiculously expensive, at what were 4-5 average months wages of that period at least. But thankfully some people had this kit and used it to good effect, for recording every day things that disapeared and are not more than a memory, like those trains Footage of a Southern railroad consist roaring up Saluda grade is as rare as a 400 carat diamond, and that's what this recording is, a diamond. Despite it's age and blurred video the sound quality is still remarkable, I remember that the video quality wasn't much better on fresh recordings, that's just what it was in 1983.

[@ColumbiaAreaRailProductions]

This is some nice vintage footage here!

[@ScottJohnson4449]

I was working on a track survey thru there in 1985. I almost jumped out of the FRA test car T-10. It was an old Budd SPV, and it's brakes wouldn't hold us as we started to head downhill. 2 Southern (actually Norfolk Southern but no repaint yet!) SDs following us just in case sped up and coupled onto us in the fly, then slowed us to the proper speed. I had the door open and the front vestibule open and trap door sprung. I was the forward observer and didn't wan to be an airbag. Puckered up quite well. I had more adventures, wrote about them in TRAINS, Sept 09, Riding the rails with Riley. " Hope to get there again someday.

[@davidandyvonne06]

Thanks for sharing this. I bet that was quite the experience you had that day, LOL! I got to work over there as conductor and engineer from July '96 until NS shut it down in Dec '01. I sure miss it!

[@ScottJohnson4449]

@@davidandyvonne06 Yes, David, it was one of the top 5 scares in my brief railroad career. Maybe some day it will run again, but with traffic gone from the Loops, I doubt it.

[@donsharp17]

Learned to love SR diesels back in the early 70s. Used to go to a park sit at the overlook watching diesel engines climb the graded trestle between Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. Beautiful sight

[@chicnwing4519]

Love the High hood long hood foward..

[@erikmcc804]

miss the old Southern 😢😢😢😢

[@scpiedmontvideoproductions878]

Having lived here in south Carolina for closed to a year! I've been fascinated with saluda grade! Having been to Horseshoe curve cranberry grade and sand patch! all these grades are mind bogglingly steep though cranberry grades been abandoned. But Saluda grade was the greatest or should I say the steepest of all! Hopefully one day NS will reactivate it!Or perhaps sections can be sold off for tourist trains! in

[@MASTERCHIEF1062]

do you know how high the insurance prices would be for a tourist railroad to operate on that track, providing NS ever turns it loose, the only think that'll happened to it if at all is it'll get sold off to watco's blue ridge southern, so they can use the tracks that lead right into Saluda as storage.

[@sherrysetliff2502]

Great thought, but, no it ain't going to happen. Glad to see you know about the horseshoe bend. I live in that area.

[@00jamiejohnson00]

@@sherrysetliff2502 you are right. i grew up in saluda my family still lives there and theres always some rumor about the trains coming again but it always falls through

[@TK-ec5bv]

Cranberry is not abandoned. Still in use by CSX.

[@johnobtrains]

never new this existed until recently .....but I lived by a Southern main line as a kid(fort mill /Charlotte by old PTL property).....one spring(85) a coupler broke on a s.bound mixed freight,believe it or not,me and a buddy were allowed to climb aboard[ I don't know what kindda power it was] but it was actually running short-hood forward and the conductor gave us these small cold waters with the railroads name on it,but I mainly remember being in awe of how complex it seemed inside despite when I see cabs now they look spacious.........the tour didn't last long and I never had that happen again but I know the Southern had lifers working for them........

[@loganbaileysfunwithtrains606]

Was it possible a Norfolk & Western unit you were in? Since it was 1985 it was NS and the locomotive could have had a bidirectional cab

[@davidarnett6232]

MOUNTAIN RAILROADING BABY! Would be cool to see some of the old roads again.....like the Clinchfield.

[@telsport]

My granddaddy was chief dispatcher of the Clinchfield at Erwin Henry D Cheek until 1955

[@KevinJones-su6bb]

shame about the line being washed out hope someone will open up the line again soon

[@joeseymour4073]

Thanks for posting this! That little station with the caboose and the town look like a model railroad come to life! I cranked the sound as soon as I heard those SD40-2s coming. lol

[@grettajetta]

Thank you Joe. Yes, nothing like a Southern Railway airhorn to get your attention!

[@davidarnett6232]

That's awesome Tom! I lived in Roan Mountain TN., which was approx 40-45 mins from Erwin. CRR was and is my favorite RR. Great memories indeed. Even though a fallen flag, I still like finding good vids about it. There is one, on you tube, that I can't recall immediatley that shows a dispatcher in Erwin doing his thing. Saluda however, was definitely a good example of man against mountains. Thanks for the vid and response Tom!

[@AXL1962]

Retired yardmaster, bostic and Spartanburg

[@sd45longhoodfoward]

This is great history lesson on the Southern Saluda grade

[@brianbooher7318]

Southern railroad had exactly 9 years to the day to live at this point

[@dannylittle6766]

amazing, 3 SD40-2s in screaming notch 8 for just 13 or 14 loads? Plus they needed dynamic brakes just to get the 3 engines down the hill safely. That's a steep hill.

[@111jacare]

Suggest that you look for the Southern Railways - Saluda Grade Training Video. In that video, they talked about the grade, and what they done with a full load of coal. 4 head end locos and 2 helpers set up by remote control. They had a 'speed trap' for downhill trains, from memory, 67 seconds at 8 m.p.h. Any faster than that, and the switch would stay aligned for the 'kitty litter'!

[@MattBNSF1991]

They probably were doubling the hill with the employee on the rear and then heading back down

[@mkl62]

One of the steepest RR grades in the US. Sad that it is no longer in service.

[@grettajetta]

In July 2017 I visited Melrose, NC at the foot of the grade and nature is taking back the property. Sadly, people have wrecked the signals there in attempts to carry off pieces. Blue Ridge Southern sometimes stores cars on the line south of Flat Rock toward Tuxedo. BLU swaps the stored cars out with other cars every few months, so at least there's a sliver of activity in Flat Rock. I caught a few glimpses of the line north of Saluda and the segments I saw seem to be in okay shape.

[@mkl62]

The same has happened in Greenwood, SC on the old Norfolk Southern Connector. They started a new line in early 1980 between G'wood and Ninety Six and it went under Hwy 25/178. They then upgraded the old Georgia & Florida Line where it connected to the Seaboard Coastline and then ran it up the old Piedmont & Northern to Greenville. In November 1982, the Southern tracks were taken up in town. April 1990, service between G'Wood & Honea Path ended. 1994, the tracks were removed from G'wood through NInety Six to the brickyard. Then the rest was abandoned in 1998 from the brickyard through Chappells to Silverstreet. Also, the NS line from Prosperity through Pomaria to the Columbia-Spartanburg line are gone. They share the track with CSX.

[@RailsOfTheSouthProductions]

mkl62 actually it is the steepest grade in the US, close to a 5% grade, I think second belongs to Tennessee Pass

[@RailsOfTheSouthProductions]

. Saluda was also the only grade that uphill trains could go faster than their downhill counterparts.

[@jamesrussell6123]

Old Southern Railways never die they become part of Norfolk Southern

[@60trainhunter]

amazing K5LLA at 2:30!

[@Rogerwatersfan91]

60trainhunter it’s actually a Nathan P5. That and a few P3’s and M3’s are all Southern ran.

[@anrails3220]

Only sd70ace's have k5lla's and some dash 9's

[@LotusbandicootRR]

It's probably a P5A, but it sounds an awful lot like a K5LLA for sure! K5LLAs didn't exist until the 2000s

[@nicholaschard7143]

Railroading at its best !

[@jrcrawford4]

A lot of things were better in 1983!

[@GPS7777]

AWESOME video!!! Loved seeing trains come up Saluda when I was a kid! Only thing that beats the sound of those diesels screaming in Notch-8 is the 611 barking up the hill!@bearcatftball61 the TR line from Hendersonville to Brevard last I heard was in the early stages of abandonment by NS to be converted into a trail.

[@ColumbiaAreaRailProductions]

Not anymore. A new shortline RR called the Blue Ridge Southern (BLU) will operate on the line, beginning July 26th.

[@00jamiejohnson00]

@@ColumbiaAreaRailProductions this never happened they kept saying it would but nope

[@howielane8406]

I can remember standing on the corner of 176 and Main Street, Saluda watching the trains coming up the hill, as a teenager. I went away serving in The Air Force to come back and learned the route had been closed. Anyplace else up there in the area worth visiting?

[@richardgerlach5156]

I wonder how many coupler knuckles were broken on this grade? Especially without Helpers on the rear! Watch out for slack! Great video!

[@00jamiejohnson00]

@phillyslasher saluda grade always had the best equipment anywhere due to the risk of runaways and how much strain it put on everything. when it straddled the grade it was insane pressure both ends

[@CaptNemo100]

Long hood forward.....yay!

[@RailPreserver2K]

The depot was moved to its current spot later in 1983 or the year later

[@markquiswest6607]

I love the Ole Southern, that's my baby!

[@naked_carrot2415]

been a railroader for 14+ years and i cannot figure out what the hell the tracks are at 4:00 besides the main. thtas like 300ft of track and thats it. anyone wanna comment?

[@grettajetta]

That's an escape track in case a train loses its brakes on the downgrade. Its purpose was to derail it at a slower speed than it would achieve further down. There was another escape track at the bottom of the grade at Melrose of considerable length. It went up a mountainside. There was a timing circuit here and only when a train had taken the proper time to assure it was under control, did the switch at Melrose move to direct the train onto the main line.

[@naked_carrot2415]

@@grettajetta thanks, i figured that was what it was. looked similar to runaway truck ramps on some hills ive been on but wasnt quite sure. looked smaller than i would figure it would have been tho at the time im sure the tonnage would have been fairly even. thanks brother.

[@johnobtrains]

yes it was........the merger had already taken place,and by the relaxed nature or the crew,I'd say a great chance........Thankyou for asking because it's a huge factor in my life and I do believe I missed my calling to be a hogger..........

[@jamielacourse7578]

Thankfully they had dynamic braking by then.....

[@AndrewTheRocketCityRailfan4014]

Who’s after realizing we’re about to lose Saluda grade?

[@GeorgeJansen]

Sounds so much like seaboard coastline Emporia, VA 1983

[@abloogywoogywoo]

Why didn't they give the brakeman a proper caboose?

[@sonnydean1617]

Get on it Big Green!

[@ACs_Trains]

2:30 is that a K5LLA horn?

[@milepost26.69]

its a P5 but it sure soundsl ike it

[@benschlechter]

RIP Southern Railway. It seems unlikely Saluda will ever see train traffic again. If that is the case, then abandonment proceedings should commence.

[@bearcatftball61]

Do you think any of the lines throughout Hendersonville will ever be used again?

[@richardgerlach5156]

+bearcatftball61 Probably not the one to Brevard. I've always felt that NS could still use Saluda grade for southbound (downhill) traffic. It all comes down to $!

[@grettajetta]

Dad's Cats is a retailer of collectable die-cast models and memorabilia of all kinds. The owner moved from Hendersonville to the Saluda depot in early 2018. He has in mind a tourist-oriented passenger train operating between Hendersonville and Saluda. The scenery is lovely, the line is not used by owner Blue Ridge Southern (except for car storage at times) and might be a good candidate for such a thing.

[@jamesgeorge6367]

@@grettajetta I know the owner he's my friend

[@ArkansasLocomotiveWorks]

What's the percentage

[@jamesgeorge960]

Saluda Grade was a 5% grade which was the steepest grade in United States

[@gabrielgonzalez7342]

Not running anymore

[@JAILRail]

2:29

[@brianbooher7318]

Sory southern railroad had 7 years to the day to live Norfolk southern was official born 12 31 1990

[@walidalili6111]

hi everyone ,if anyone else trying to find out help getting a railroad job try Tarbetti Rail Work Tutor ( search on google ) ? Ive heard some awesome things about it and my work buddy got cool success with it.

[@christianputt3113]

Brakes are smoking

[@brycehale3576]

That's from the sanders. The locomotives have a little nozzle in front of each wheel that shoots sand onto the rail for extra track adhesion. Its used while ascending steep grades or with wet rails, etc.

[@00jamiejohnson00]

@@brycehale3576 took me forever to figure out what that was when i was a teenager in saluda