jtbell

It was nice seeing you there, too! It was a nice coincidence that we ended up in the same booth on the domeliner. I've finally got my pictures all fixed up: The rest of them, and a few videos, are here. I agree real passenger service is probably very unlikely, not so much because of the speed (maybe modern self-propelled diesel ralicars could go a bit faster), but because of (a) having to deal with CSX for the Mt. Holly - NW Charlotte section, (b) rehabilitating the out-of-service track that goes as far as Cedar St. in Charlotte, and (c) dealing with the "last mile" into uptown. Maybe some Panthers tailgating trains, if the Lakewood Trolley people can get something going, too. I found out about this excursion pretty much by accident. I was Googling for "Piedmont and Northern", doing some research for my web pages, and the Premier Rails page about the excursion (with reservation info) turned up. I was surprised that it wasn't linked from anywhere on the Iowa Pacific web site, as far as I could tell. Then I found the P&N Facebook page which had a link to the Premier Rails page.

I re-confirmed my reservation today, for next Saturday. Weather looks OK so far, knock wood. I wasn't confident of my ability to get going early enough to arrive in time for the 9 AM trip, so I opted for the 1 PM trip. If I do manage to arrive early enough, I'll "chase" the morning trip and take some pictures of it. I see someone linked to my web page about the P&N on page 2 of this thread a few years ago. The server died since then, and I had to relocate my web site. Now I have two P&N pages, one each for North Carolina and South Carolina.

They might have the "rare mileage" collector in mind: railfans who try to ride over as many different lines as possible, using excursion trips to cover lines that don't have regular passenger service. The P&N hasn't seen any passenger trains except for the Christmas Town trains just recently, since 1951. However, it looks like they announced this less than three weeks in advance. That's not much lead time for people who might want to travel a long distance for this. Anyway, I'm interested in electric railroads specifically, and there haven't been very many of those in the South except for local streetcars, light rail, and the metro-type systems in Atlanta and Miami. So I'm attracted to this from the historical angle. It's also only a couple hours' drive for me. I splurged for the dome and and am keeping my fingers crossed for the weather.

I think a natural candidate for this would be the former P&N route to Gastonia. NCDOT owns most of it, and it's either mothballed (Cedar St. to Pinoca) or has little freight traffic (certainly the Mt. Holly to Gastonia section, and I think also Pinoca to Mt. Holly, the section owned by CSX). You'd have to figure out a way to get it into the heart of Uptown, though.

Here's a view of the original Elizabeth Avenue streetcar. The message side of the card is postmarked 1906.

I went to the opening ceremony, which was moved from the plaza in front of the arena to inside the transit center (with buses roaring in and out during the speeches), then rode the first public trip in the afternoon. Here's the beginning of the ceremonial first trip, shortly after the ceremony: