Dr. Fred McConnel has had a passion for trains traveling through Western North Carolina since he was six years old. He used to go down to Old Fort with his father to his father’s factory and he would watch the Southern Green Diesels get ready to climb the loops around Andrew’s Geyser to Ridgecrest.

 

For the last 30 years he has modeled the Saluda Grade in his basement in Atlanta. He studied the history, walked the tracks and collected types of every engine used for trains traveling the Saluda Grade. If he could not buy an engine type that ran on the grade, he built it. By the means of small video cameras you can be taken back in time and ride on different famous trains that traveled through Paces Gap. The Model grade is so realistic that it has runaways and stalled engines on the layout just like the real track.

 

Dr. McConnel’s talk will begin with Capt. Pearson’s story on why the Saluda grade was built and take the listeners through many of the railroad adventures like the wreck of steam engine 4052. You will experience by camera re-enactment of what it was like to go down the hill on this giant steam engine. You will also hear the story of Pitt Bellew who first thought of how to make the grade safer and probably saved the grade from abandonment in 1903. Engineer Bellew’s concept of safety tracks is probably the most important contribution of Saluda to transportation safety. Even though the track now lies in rust, lives are still being saved on the highways that have run-off areas to save trucks that have lost their brakes. Let’s all have fun re-living the railroad adventures that made the life of Saluda so rich.

 

– Submitted by Cathy Jackson