News

Flat Rock residents spot something new: the train

By Bill Moss, Published: September 30, 2015

Residents of Highland Lake Villas last week saw something they had not seen in a long time last week. Trains were running on the railroad tracks past their homes.

People speculated that Blue Ridge Railroad had gotten a new freight customer. One resident heard that the train was serving Green River Quarry. No and no. It's less dramatic than either of those developments.

"I know that caught a lot of people off guard," said Brigid Rich, the Western North Carolina marketing manager of the railroad, a part of the Kansas-based shortline operator Watco Transportation Services. "There are no new active customers" on that part of the line. "We're just storing some rail cars."

For several days last week locomotives pulled covered gondolas to a storage area in the Flat Rock area. Rich said residents won't see the Blue Ridge line operating often.

"Once they get out there they'll be out there for several months," she said.

The active railroad line runs southeast from Hendersonville to Flat Rock and on to Tuxedo and Saluda.

The rail line running southeast across Henderson County, serving Kimberly-Clark Corp. and other businesses, is not the same line as the Hendersonville-to-Brevard line that greenway proponents hope will become the Ecusta Trail. That 20-mile line as not been in service since 2002. Watco would have to agree to railbank and sell the line to the Ecusta Trail group to allow a greenway. Rich said she had no news about that.