Saluda Grade sold

[Paul S.]

Well, I suppose this was inevitable. One of my favorite pieces of railroad will never be restored.

Saluda Grade, which Norfolk Southern mothballed almost 20 years ago, has been sold and will become a trail.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-revi...sion-to-trail/

The cynic in me says NS is finally parting with this famous piece of railroading because it needs as much cash as possible to mitigate its FUBAR in East Palestine, Ohio.

If you've never seen why Saluda is such a noteworthy piece of railroad, check out the lead photo in this Railfan & Railroad article: https://railfan.com/non-profits-team...to-rail-trail/

Sic transit gloria mundi. ...

[Allen]

Sounds like it's time to model it to keep it going, Paul!

[Paul S.]

Sounds like it's time to model it to keep it going, Paul!

If I had the space, I would, Allen. There's a lot to like about train ops over Saluda.

[Allen]

Space, smace.
Make it happen...

[Paul S.]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[craigtownsend]

Kinda like Homesteak Pass. Be interesting to see what BNSF does with that after they get MRL trackage back. I'm guess that goes away soon too.

I want to say one of the reasons Homesteak Pass is "inactive" vs abandoned is related to the BN/MRL agreement and something to do with the UP.


On a side note does this make the Boeing Hill the steepest grade in active service at 5.2%?

[Alan B]

Dang. Inevitable,it seems. But at least we have a lot of great photos and video's of the trains tackling that hill. Not so much Homestake. It was mothballed by BN when MRL was spun off, to keep MRL from having direct access to UP. BN kept that, and the track to the Pipestone quarry at the bottom of the east grade, just to maintain control of MRL's outside access. Even still today, MRL has no access to UP directly.

I do wonder about Evaro out of Missoula. It isn't too bad, but is a duplicate route, so we will see.

[Paul S.]

On a side note does this make the Boeing Hill the steepest grade in active service at 5.2%?

Boeing Hill would have to be among the front-runners in North America, Craig.

Nothing quite like watching and hearing a pair of Geep 38s make the push out of CP Mukilteo and up the hill with those big wide loads for Boeing!

[craigtownsend]

The other day the Boeing job shoved the first load of 737 Max up the hill. A few local railfans got photos/videos. Rare move that will start to be more common.

[Paul S.]

This is a good video about ops on Saluda Grade. The script is a bit over the top just at the beginning, but then it was a training video for the Southern.

https://youtu.be/9IABM8UPplY

Notice how the SD40-2s are correctly oriented with the long hood forward.🙂