News

Train Tales speaker touts passenger rail service to WNC

By Lightning Reports, Published: September 4, 2024

Guest speaker Ray Rapp, co-chair of the Western North Carolina Rail Corridor Committee, will discuss  “Real Prospects for Restoring Passenger Rail Service to WNC” during Saluda Train Tales at 7 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, at the Saluda Historic Depot and Museum.

Restoration of passenger rail to Asheville has never been closer, according to Ray, and he is eager to share the prospects and hurdles to bringing back passenger service to the mountains after a nearly 50-year hiatus.

Rapp has lectured extensively on regional rail history. As early as his undergraduate career, Rapp was fascinated by the way railroads united the country after the Civil War by linking east, west, north and south.

“In ten short years after the arrival of the railroad in 1880, Asheville more than doubled its population and transformed the mountains,” he says. “Especially fascinating to me was the challenge of building railroads up the Blue Ridge escarpment to the isolated mountain communities.” This was done by laying looping tracks up the mountain near Old Fort and creating the steepest standard gauge mainline grade in the U.S. — the famous Saluda Grade.