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Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Company"The Road of Personal Service" |
Cliffdale, NC / Nov 2005 / Warren Calloway 
n the south central part of North Carolina, the Aberdeen & Rockfish railroad has done something remarkable for over 100 years: It's trains have been fighting an uphill battle with the undulating profiles of the Sandhills country and winning freight traffic and profitability in the process. That alone is just cause for a Centennial Celebration for a 45-mile line that started as a logging road in the late 1800s, then recast itself into a mini-bridge route carrier and today serves as the healthy parent of a second profitable shortline. But what makes the A&R even more noteworthy is the kind of endearing features which inspired legendary rail author Lucius Beebe to devote five pages to the A&R in his classic 1947 short line tribute "Mixed Train Daily".
hese days the Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Company operates a series of shortline railroads in central North Carolina and South Carolina, including the Pee Dee River Railway and the Dunn-Erwin Railway. But the orginial Aberdeen & Rockfish was the Aberdeen to Fayetteville route, 47 miles of shortline operation with interchange connections with the Seaboard, the Atlantic Coast Line, and the original Norfolk Southern. Incorporated in 1892, the road operated local passenger service as late as 1951. Today the road hauls chemicals, coal, lumber, and paper, but operations on the original Aberdeen-Fayetteville line are largely limited to switching operations in a Fayetteville industrial park. Trips between the road's namesake towns are much less common.
The Aberdeen & Rockfish has always been a classic southern shortline, sporting many instersting types of motive power over the years. The road was one of the first southern short roads to dieselize in the transition era, choosing as their first steam replacements some EMD cab units. A GP7 would come to the line in 1951 as #205 -- a notable unit in that it is one of only a few non-rebuilt Geep in shortline service still owned and operated by its purchasing railroad. Offices are maintained in Fayetteville and in an historic building in downtown Aberdeen. A steam-era locomotive service house is still maintained in Aberdeen. Interchange is with CSX Transportation in Abderdeen and with CSX and Norfolk Southern in Fayetteville.
1988 Official Guide listing
1939 Official Guide ad / collection
CSX @ Aberdeen and Fayetteville
NS @ Fayetteville
RWH and collection
North Carolina Rail Division Map / collection
from American Short Line Railway Guide by Edwin Lewis - 1975 / collection
he Aberdeen & Rockfish of today doesn't pick up carloads of ripening watermelons, and its employees no longer carry fishing poles to work -- or at least as far as the general office in Aberdeen knows. The brimstone hot cabs of the steam locomotives like No. 40 have been replaced with diesels, although they can still swelter in July and August.
Today, the railroad continues to do its work virtually unnoticed just as it has for 100 years. Five days a week, the train runs between Aberdeen and Fayetteville. But it's more than just running trains. Because the A&R totes chemicals to make hair spray in Raeford, people in Hoke County have jobs. Thanks to the A&R's timely delivery in Fayetteville of boxcars filled with tons of newsprint, each Sunday morning more than 82,000 subscribers can look forward to their copy of the "The Fayetteville Observer-Times." Cumberland County residents who recycle metals should know the journey to the recycling plant often begins in A&R gondolas loaded in Fayetteville. The examples go on and on as the railroad moves freight efficiently and economically serving the industry and communities of the Sandhills.
And just as in the days when No. 40 ruled the rails, today's diesel locomotives are emblazoned with the words that the driving force behing the company's success. The Aberdeen & Rockfish is "The Road of Personal Service."
The Road of Personal Service: A Centennial History / 1992
AR system map / web
RWH
from Mixed Train Daily by Lucius Beebe - 1961 / collection
HawkinsRails thanks railfan friends Ben Wells and Warren Calloway for use of their AR photographs
Nov 2005 / Warren Calloway
Scrapbooks
he Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad in North Carolina is notable on a number of counts. It is, for one thing, the first railroad in the index of The Official Guide. For another, its grade between Aberdeen and Ashley Heights, where two engines are required to hike even the shortest cuts up the hill, is the steepest ruling grade in the Carolinas.
For many years its controlling family, the Blues, refused on religious grounds to permit Sunday operations. And it has as wide a diversity of motive power and depot architecture as can be encountered on any short line. Its mail and passenger doodlebug and its roadmaster's car are pictured below on the page opposite. Its stately Federalist depot at Aberdeen and its somewhat less pretentious station at Rockfish are below on this page. In addition to these interesting qualifications, the A. & R.'s engine crews still decorate their locomotives with personal adornments in the old manner which has almost disappeared except on a few short lines in the South, where individualism has not entirely yielded to the spirit of the age.
Lucius Beebe / Mixed Train Daily / 1961
Scrapbook
all pages from Aberdeen & Rockfish scrapbook / JCH
Lagniappe
Covered Wagon Days
Don Wallworth painting / web
Personal Golden Hour
image Ben Wells / artwork RWH
Elephants on Parade
image and artwork RWH
Shadows and Light
Fayetteville, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
All Boxed In
Aberdeen, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
I Want to Go Home
Aberdeen, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
Choices to Ponder
Fayetteville, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
Centenarian Survivor
Aberdeen, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
Tip of the Spartan Spear
Fayetteville, NC / Apr 2019 / Ben Wells
Snapshots
Aberdeen, NC, is well attested as a railfan paradise. Two independent shortlines -- one of them the classic A&R -- interchange with the CSX on a longstanding mainline stretch leaving Hamlet, to the south. As such, there is plenty of action to see ... such as the day my dad and I found the AC&W working the CSX interchange. Anyone who follows southern shortline action knows of the Aberdeen & Rockfish, with its history of EMD covered wagons and its classic little offices in Aberdeen, just off the CSX mainline. I hope to return to the line one day to photograph more of its equipment. Until then, I'm grateful to Ben Wells and Warren Calloway for the use of their AR photography.
Fayetteville, NC / Apr 2019 / Ben Wells
Aberdeen, NC / Ben Wells
Fayetteville, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
Aberdeen, NC / Apr 2019 / Ben Wells
Aberdeen, NC / Apr 2019 / RWH
Links / Sources
- Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Co. official company site
- Wikipedia article on the Aberdeen & Rockfish
- Aberdeen & Rockfish photographs by Joseph Hinson
- Diesel Shop roster for Aberdeen & Rockfish
- NCpedia entry for Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Company
- This NC Railroad That Brought Soldiers Home From War Is Still an Economic Engine by Kathryn Trogdon
- Aberdeen & Rockfish RR celebrates 125 Years in North Carolina - Railway Age
- Edward A. Lewis, American Shortline Railway Guide - Fifth Edition (Kalmbach, 1996) 13
- Jim Wrinn, Edward Lewis, The Road of Personal Service: A Centennial History (Aberdeen & Rockfish Railway, 1992)