I wonder how many residents of the Carolinas today know that the Piedmont of NC and the Upstate of SC had high speed electric rail service by the second decade of the Twentieth Century? Not many I’ll bet. Some railfans here and there and an old timer or two. The high speed part needs to be qualified as high speed relative to the other option of a horse and buggy on the washboard dirt roads of the day, but clean and quiet electric locomotives hauled passengers and freight across the region. In North Carolina tracks ran North to Terrell, NC and West to Gastonia, from Charlotte. In South Carolina the Piedmont and Northern Railway connected Greenwood and Anderson to Greenville and on to Spartanburg with dozens of towns, villages and whistle stops in between.
James B. Duke was a visionary entrepreneur with an eye on the future. He was also a sharp businessman who kept the other eye focused on the bottom line. During the 1890’s electric trolly lines were popular in many cities and interurban rail lines were being built, but very few of these were in the southern states. Duke was already heavily invested in electric power utilities so expansion into electric railroad ownership was a natural choice. He would be paying a company that he owned to haul coal to his power generating plants that supplied the electricity to run the locomotives. Along the way these rail lines could carry passengers and pick up additional freight revenue at industrial parks he was developing along the right of way. It was a sweetheart deal made in heaven. In 1909 he directed a team of his employees to investigate the construction of an interurban railroad system.
In January of 1910 The Piedmont Traction Company was chartered to operate in North Carolina and the Greenville, Spartanburg & Anderson Railway Company was chartered in South Carolina. While most interurbans were light rail that primarily carried passengers, Duke’s system was designed from the railbed up as a full service, standard railroad. Power would be supplied from an overhead catenary wire system at 1,500 volts, more than twice the voltage used by most interurban systems.
Construction began in North Carolina in April of 1911 and in South Carolina two months later. By 1912 24 miles of mainline between Charlotte and Gastonia opened for business, in November of that year tracks from Greenwood to Greenville were hauling passengers and freight. In April of 1914 the section from Greenville to Spartanburg was in operation for a total of eighty-nine miles. The two separate companies were merged in 1914 and operated under the Piedmont and Northern name but there was no connecting track between the two states.
Duke had always intended to extend his rail line from Spartanburg to Gastonia but events like World War 1 kept getting in the way. In 1924 Duke instructed his staff to finalize plans for the fifty mile connecting link but in October 1925 Duke passed away unexpectedly and the project suffered another setback while his estate was in probate. In March of 1927 P&N’s management was finally able to present their proposal to the Interstate Commerce Commission for review. The P & N wasn’t the only railroad serving the region and bitter rivalries had developed, especially with the Southern Rail lines whose tracks ran parallel for most of the way from Greenville to Charlotte. Southern was a much bigger rail road and owned more swamp critters and in the end the Interstate Commerce Commission denied the P&N’s request. The ICC’s decision effectively ended expansion ambitions but the volume of freight in the areas it already served continued to grow.
Passenger revenue had steadily declined as the automobile’s popularity grew and by 1951 the P&N was ready to discontinue passenger service. James B. Duke’s foresight continued to pay dividends, literally, and the railroad turned a profit as it always had, even in the depths of the Great Depression. The early fifties also saw a change in motive power. The overhead power supply lines were showing their age and P&N’s management decided that switching to diesel power would be cheaper and more practical than replacing it. By May of 1954 the last of the electric locomotives were retired from mainline service. The transition to diesel carried the the P&N into the 1960’s as a money making railroad but in 1965 the Duke heirs decided that they wanted to sell their holdings which amounted to 40% of the company’s stock. After years of legal wrangling a merger agreement with the Seaboard Coast Line was approved in 1969 and the Piedmont and Northern Railroad ceased to exist. Today, much of the railbed constructed by the P&N is still being used by the CSX railroad, like the section that runs past the old station in Greer, SC., but CSX doesn’t stop here to pick up passengers.
The 5103 is the only surviving example of the six boxcab electric locomotives that the P&N ordered from the General Electric Co. in 1912. Numbered from 5100 to 5105 they were delivered to the South Carolina operation during the fall and winter of 1913 to 1914 and used for long distance, heavy freight hauling. These locomotives were powered by four GE 250 horsepower motors that could pull a train of 30 loaded freight cars. Engines # 5101 and 5103 served the P&N well for 44 years and were to be the last two electric engines in operation on the line. After mainline electric power was turned off in South Carolina in 1954 they were transferred to Charlotte, NC. where they worked in a freight yard as switch engines until 1958. In 1962 the Southeastern Railway Museum asked the P&N to donate one of the two engines for display at their Atlanta, Ga. museum. 1963 would mark the 50th anniversary of the road’s completion, so the P&N’s management decided to do it right. The 5103 was hauled to the main repair shop at River Junction in Greenville, SC., where it was completely restored, inside and out before being presented to the museum. It was later purchased and moved to the North Carolina Transportation Museum at Spencer where it is currently displayed.
Sources:
Piedmont and Northern, The Great Electric System of the South by Thomas T. Fetters and Peter W. Swanson Jr.
www.american-rails.com
www.nctrans.org
