In this work, the most comprehensive of its kind, the author examines in engaging narrative and wonderful photography the development of the area’s complete railroading industry—Class 1 railroads, short lines, industrial and mining roads, and logging lines. Added to the textual histories are more than three hundred photographs and illustrations, including timetables and maps for most of the lines discussed.

Since the opening of the first permanent railway in 1833, hundreds of railroad companies have operated in North Carolina. Rail transportation, faster and more efficient than other methods of the era, opened new markets for the products of North Carolina's farms, factories, and mines. Over the years, North Carolina rail companies have ranged in size from well-engineered giants like the Southern Railway to temporary logging railroads like the Hemlock. Cross ties and rails were laid across almost every conceivable terrain: tidal marshes, sand hills, rolling piedmont, and mountain grades. Vulnerable to the turbulent and unregulated economies of the day, few railroad companies escaped reorganizations and receiverships during their corporate lives, often leaving tangled and contradictory histories in their passing.

Telling the story of Tweetsie Railroad and the East Tennessee Railway, this book documents the history of the standard gauge ET & WNC after the narrow gauge was gone and is illustrated with many maps and photographs.

With dozens of never-before-published photographs, this history traces the 140-year rise, fall, and rise again of the Carolina & North-Western Railway. Charting the ups and downs of the line’s construction—the politics, squabbling, triumphs, and failures—the chronicle provides a microcosmic overview of American railroading in this story of a single line. Life on the railroad through the Great Depression, World War II, dieselization, and absorption by Southern Railway is explored, punctuated by the real-life experiences of old-timers. Nearly 200 maps and photographs complement the text. Together they deliver an inspiring, historical tale of the Carolina & North-Western.

Short line mountain railroads are often miracles of construction. Built primarily for shipping logs, the Mount Mitchell Railroad was no exception. Within a span of 21 miles, the road climbed 3,500 feet, but utilized only three trestles and nine switchbacks, while maintaining a grade of five and a half percent. In this richly illustrated work the author brings to life a time when Mount Mitchell was dressed in virgin timber. Access to the mountain, located in Western North Carolina, was slow and difficult; but after completion of the railroad, a timbering industry was born. The railroad also provided tourists with scenic trips along its rugged contours.

Tweetsie Country can be roughly defined as being bound on the north by the Great Depression, on the east by the state of North Carolina, on the west by Tennessee, and on the south by hope and determination. Here is all the color and charm of the Tweetsie, with its broad gauge aspirations on a narrow gauge budget. It is the story of a unique little railroad that traveled the Blue Ridge country and won the hearts of those who lived there. This handsome pictorial history includes 250 outstanding photographs, plus maps, scale drawings, and three full-color paintings by Mike Pearsall and Casey Holtzinger.

Still suffering the devastation of the Civil war that ended only ten years earlier, North Carolina shipped prison inmates from Raleigh to build the Mountain Division of the western North Carolina railroad. Some amazing and astonishing events occurred from 1875 through 1879 as this mountain railroad (3 miles straight-line distance, requiring 9+ miles of track) was pushed up the eastern continental divide. Six tunnels were excavated, from 89 to 1,800 feet long, each 15 feet tall. For open cuts, solid rock was cracked by dousing cold mountain water on roaring fires. The first use in the southeastern U.S. of a new product called Nobel's Blasting Oil (now called nitroglycerin!) was on the project. It was mixed with sawdust and corn meal, making nitroglycerin mash. A very heavy wood-burning locomotive was picked up off the tracks by the convicts and pushed several miles overland to the top of the mountain to help dig out the longest tunnel. The most common tool used was a flat rock held in the strong hands of the convicts to dig and spread dirt as they prepared the flat path needed to lay crossties for the rails. Tunnels, Nitro and Convicts condenses the incredible history of the most ambitious earth-moving, mountain-conquering project in the United States as of the 1870s into an engaging, easy-to-read story. The fascinating and compelling intertwining of long dark caves, blasting and cracking of massive rocks, the first use of nitroglycerin in the southeastern United States, and pushing a big locomotive several miles through the woods up a mountain ... all by hundreds of convicts who worked under severe conditions with the most basic tools ... makes this true account of post-civil war railroad history a story you must read!