Freight trains westbound toward Asheville are back on the tracks for the first time since Tropical Storm Helene ravaged railroad infrastructure in the North Carolina mountains, bringing with them a welcome boost to local economies and a revived hope that passenger service may finally return to the region.
On Saturday, April 18, Norfolk Southern’s NS 9900 train carrying freight departed Hickory shortly after 8 a.m. and rumbled into the Asheville rail yard around 2:30 p.m. With 59 cars carrying cement, paper, plastic pellets, hops and barley malt, it was the first revenue train to complete that route since the devastating floods, Norfolk Southern spokesperson Heather Garcia told Carolina Public Press.
A crowd of rail enthusiasts gathered at the historic train depot in Old Fort, close to where the final repairs had taken place, to celebrate Norfolk Southern’s return and to watch the train roll by.
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Damage from the storm had especially impacted a winding, 15-mile section of rail which includes the “Old Fort Loops,” an impressive feat of engineering which guides trains up a steep ascent through a network of tunnels as they approach the Blue Ridge mountains.
The loops were the last section on the Asheville-Salisbury line to come back online after a massive rebuilding effort. Without them, the connection between industry in the North Carolina mountains and the rest of the state had essentially been severed.
Rebuilding the loops was no easy task, said Norfolk Southern’s chief engineer of design and construction Alan Johnson.
“It is a fascinating piece of railroad to say the least,” Johnson said.
“We really had to be strategic,” he added, “to combat this unforgiving mountain.”
In some areas, the rail bed had completely washed away, leaving tracks floating in the air with nothing to support them underneath. Crews had to navigate steep and rocky terrain with very few access points just to get to the sections that needed repairs.
In all, it took nearly a full year to get the tracks operational again. On April 7, Norfolk Southern ran a test car through the loops with no issue, signaling that the railroad was ready to fully reopen to freight.
Watching that first train car on the rebuilt tracks felt “fantastic,” Johnson said.
“We see destruction, but dealing with hurricanes in mountainous areas is not something you deal with very often,” he said.
“It was just amazing to think about October of ’24, (the destruction) we saw with our eyes, and then just the ability to rebuild this area is just extraordinary.”
‘Welcome back’ rally draws dedicated Old Fort crowd
Cathy Moore, an Old Fort native and volunteer caretaker for the railroad museum there, organized the rally at the historic train depot, which drew close to 300 people.
Onlookers waved miniature North Carolina and American flags and held signs that read “Welcome Back!” Arriving around 10:30 a.m., the crew stopped the train en route to Asheville to get off and take pictures with the crowd.
“I don’t know if I could have written a better script,” Moore said.
The importance of restoring freight rail went beyond the economic impact that it provides, she added. It’s also a cultural bedrock of her hometown.
“The thing about Old Fort is the railroad is such a significant part of the town and the community’s DNA,” Moore said.
“We were worried that we were going to lose a part of who we were.”
The restored connection between Asheville and Salisbury also means that the dream of bringing back passenger rail to the region is still alive. For more than 20 years, advocates like Moore have pushed the state and federal government and railroad operators to return passenger service between the two cities, which ended in 1975.
Those advocates formed a nonprofit organization, the WNC Rail Committee, to work toward that goal. They had begun to make progress in recent years. In December 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration identified the proposed Asheville-Salisbury route as worthy of further planning and development, and it provided funds to advance that work.
However, Helene’s destruction of the tracks along that line 10 months later threatened to bring that momentum to a screeching halt.
“Passenger rail cannot exist without freight,” Moore explained.
That’s why she became such a cheerleader for Norfolk Southern in the wake of the storm. The company, in turn, appreciated the encouragement they received from locals during the course of the arduous rebuild.
“That support definitely went a long way, and it was incredibly important to the team and really had a positive impact on this project,” Johnson said.
With freight back on track, are passengers next?
With the Old Fort Loops repaired, rail infrastructure is mostly back to normal in Western North Carolina.
Florida-based CSX Transportation, which is the only other Class 1 railroad operator in the region, completed repairs on its line between Spruce Pine and Erwin, Tenn., in September.
Short-line railroads like Blue Ridge Southern Railroad, which hauls freight from Asheville to Sylva and Hendersonville, and the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, an excursion railway which takes passengers through the scenic national park, are also open for business.
With Helene-related repairs in the rearview, all eyes are on the future of rail in the region, according to WNC Rail Committee co-chair Ray Rapp. For him, that means continuing to advance passenger rail’s comeback.
The proposed Asheville-Salisbury route would connect to the Charlotte-Raleigh line that moved a record 740,000 passengers last year.
Development of the route would cost $665 million, but 80% of that cost would be covered by the federal government if they were to give the OK on the project.
Jason Orther, the head of NCDOT’s rail division, confirmed to state legislators in an oversight hearing earlier this month that the state and federal government were still working on evaluating seven proposed passenger rail expansions across the state, including the Asheville-Salisbury line.
Rapp, who in a previous life was a state representative for parts of Haywood, Madison and Yancey counties, said the Asheville-Salisbury corridor was “at the top of the list” among those seven proposed routes.
“We’re way ahead in the corridor development planning stages,” he said.
An economic impact report from NCDOT estimated that the project would be well worth the cost by producing more than $80 million in annual economic output, employee earnings and tax revenue.
“It’s not just, ‘it’s a nice idea’ or ‘wouldn’t it be a nostalgic trip?,’” Rapp said. “We’re talking about important job-providing opportunities, as well as investment opportunities along these lines.”
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