TotalLamer

When did the cement place close? That's kind of sad.

Been looking at Main Street Realty's properties... pretty much all of them look amazing. Wow. Not too expensive either... definitely cheaper than what something similar in Charlotte would go for.

Oof... that place is looking way too expensive I'm afraid! $950 for the very lowest end of range for rents on the 1-bedroom. It's nice though!

Yeah, just noticed they cutoff at "mid income". Not really sure what that means exactly. Yeah living close to work would be nice. At least I would assume the A-Line runs through Acca, no idea!

So I was just searching around randomly and the Richmond Dairy Apartments look pretty cool... and very cheap. Thoughts?

Thanks so much for the write-up! So far Manchster sounds like the place for me. Or maybe Scott's Addition. The main thing with affordability is, well... I'm not 100% sure how much money I'd be making. Honestly, not even close. That's one of the weird things about working on the railroad... one Conductor can make wildly more than another just depending on the job they're holding down that week... holding down a scheduled job in the yard is cushy and convenient, but you'll be netting less than 3k/month. While in some places you can net 8k+ per month working the road. Ideally, however, I imagine I'd be looking to spend no more than 1k/month on rent + utilities.

So I'm not sure if this is the place to post something like this... but I'll give it a go! I'm single, 28 and currently living in Charlotte... which I'm surprised to find out actually has one of the more speedy subforums around here. Didn't expect Richmond's to be so slow! Anyways, I work for CSX, I'm a Conductor... and right now, deeply furloughed. Been looking around at places I stand for work... but most of them are pretty much in BFE. Manchester, GA... Fitzgerald, GA... Waycross, GA. There's Augusta too but... eww. Anyways, turns out I stand for a good number of turns on the Richmond to Rocky Mount run. I could qualify in just 4 or 5 round trips and be ready to work. Now I have friends from online (WoW... so sue me!) that I could stay with... maybe. Not sure. But I'm still interested in what parts of Richmond I should be looking at in case I need to find my own place later on. I don't like the suburbs... I like urban or non-suburban neighborhoods. Best examples from Charlotte I can give (if you're familiar with them) are Uptown (because Charlotte refuses to call it "downtown" because we're weirdos), South End, NoDa, Plaza Midwood... those are the kind of places I like. What would be similar places in Richmond and how are they as far as affordability? Only ever been to Richmond a couple of times before to see shows at The National.

Yeah that building is gorgeous.

EIFS is the worst thing ever created by a Human.

That would be because IKEA isn't Swedish. As far as ownership goes, anyways.

I doubt this is new news, but I don't remember seeing it anywhere... there's signs in the windows of the Nook's retail space that a boutique sneaker store is coming soon.

Oh yeah I know all about Seaboard St... take the line through there all the time. Fun fact.. there's still a gate right there beside the CSX track where you used to swing it back and forth to block either the CSX line or the O-line depending on who was going through the diamond at the time. Not sure why no one ever tore it up, but there's an orange lock (Engineering Dept) on it so you can't swing it. Speaking of that work, if you look on Google Maps you can see all the fresh ties laid out beside the tracks and the Engineering Dept equipment sitting in the runaround just north of Harris Blvd, where the big scrap metal place is. As for the jointed rail, it's not such a huge deal... heck, there's still jointed rail on the A-line just north of Florence on a short section of double-main.

Are you sure the O-line is entirely abandoned? I don't think so. I think they just keep it maintained for only 10mph like the old P&N line we operate at CSX.

Ditto on the railroad. "Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see."

As to the area around Mount Holly (and thus the bridge over the Catawba) I'm fairly certain CSX owns it. There's a split rail here: When we interchange with the P&N, you have to line the split rail, shove the cars over it and then line it back. I would imagine that marks the boundary between NCDOT owned track and CSX owned track. As for the boundaries in Mecklenburg... I'm not really sure. I would imagine CSX owns anything that hasn't been abandoned. I can tell you there's a portable derail in place here: Because there are no other industries in-service past Blue Linx. They operate out of both of those buildings (lumber yard and warehouse) and get cars at both as well. I'm not sure if the track past that point is just out-of-service or abandoned and owned by NCDOT though.

The relocation of the NS intermodal yard also helps because previously, a decent amount of traffic across the diamond involved them just going backwards and forwards switching the ramp. With the ramp relocated, that traffic will no longer occur.

REALLY?! They built an entire spur just for shipping the printers to the building? With a second track to switch towards and everything? I always assumed it was for shipping paper.

Keywords: "If done correctly" Except it'll be nothing but EIFS so it'll look like crap.

Here's another bit. Two of these industries were also recently worked. The ones circled in blue. Southern Concrete and Cunningham Wholesale. Late 2000s they went out I believe. I've heard Southern Concrete at some point in the recent past wanted to get service again but the railroad said it would be too expensive to fix the track that far and Southern Concrete didn't want to pay it either. Obviously there would have been house tracks coming off all this to serve the various industries but I don't have them marked.

As recently as the late 2000s, that line was actually quite busy. Now, it didn't go further than you see in that image (at least not in the recent past, I -think- way back when it connected with the Southern past Wilkinson) but the industrial building right there on Freedom used to be Armen Plastics. In the end, they wanted to expand their building but the owner wouldn't let them, so they moved out. And now the building sits empty, looking to be leased. I imagine the owner feels like an idiot. From everything the older guys told me, the place was a PAIN to work. They'd have cars sitting on both house tracks (the small spurs coming off the big spur) AND cars on the spur, straight across the switches. Plus, to get back to the P&N main there was only enough track left there to back out with I believe it was 2 motors + 3 cars at a time. So it was hell trying to switch them. Of course, back in the day that spur would have continued down to serve all those warehouses along Freedom. Another spur for the other side of the street, etc. That area was the Thrift Industrial District.

If you're looking for old right-of-way in areas like this, it's actually pretty simple... look for long, sweeping curves along the side of buildings in a row. Just a quick example in the area you mentioned... you can easily see where the line would once have run to service all these old industries.

Yeah everything in that area was once rail-served.

I'm not sure if an airport line has even been proposed (save for in non-specific pipe dreams) much less put into a plan for Gateway.

Is it? I dunno, we always just call it "Tryon Yard" at work.

Not quite sure what the name of the Southern's yard is, but in general "Tryon Yard" refers to the small CSX storage yard in front of the old SAL/SCL station, not the Southern's main yard on Tryon.