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SALUDA—At the next Saluda Train Tales program, Saluda Historic Depot and Museum will present guest speaker Ray Rapp, who will discuss “Real Prospects for Restoring Passenger Rail Service to WNC.”

The presentation will be at the museum on Friday, September  20, at 7 p.m., with doors opening at 6:30.

Restoration of passenger rail to Asheville has never been closer. Ray is excited to share the prospects and possible hurdles to returning passenger service to the mountains after a nearly 50-year hiatus.

Ray Rapp is co-chair of the Western North Carolina Rail Corridor Committee and has lectured extensively on regional rail history. As early as his undergraduate career, Rapp was fascinated by how 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, N.C., and creating the steepest standard gauge mainline grade in the US in Saluda.  

The Saluda Historic Depot and Museum is located at 32 W. Main Street.

 

Submitted by Nita H. High