Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Company

In 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".

AR company website

It all started in 1892 with the construction of the railroad. But the origins of the line can be traced back almost another 100 years before that, to the arrival of the Blue family, immigrants from Scotland. Settling near the present-day location of the town of Aberdeen, they acquired Moore County NC farmlands and tracts of longleaf pine trees that grew as tall as 120 feet. Such timber stands were well suited to turpentine collecting operations and logging. Following the Civil War, the future of the turpentine business in south-central North Carolina was assured with the construction in the 1870s of the Raleigh & Augusta Air Line railroad (a predecessor of the Seaboard Air Line), which would bring better transportation to the region.

One of the first sidings on the A&R in the area was called "Blue's" and it soon became a loading area for naval stores, an important product for a state with dense pine forests. The name of the siding was later changed to “Blue's Crossing”, after Malcolm Blue, the largest landowner in the area. In the late 1880's, Malcolm Blue's nephew, Civil War Veteran John Blue, moved from nearby Cumberland County to Blue's Crossing, which was renamed Aberdeen (after the Scottish seaport) in 1887. This was about ten years after the Raleigh & Augusta had completed its line from Raleigh to Hamlet, where a connection was made with the Carolina Central, an east-west line between the coastal port at Wilmington and the inland trading city of Charlotte.

In 1902, John Blue organized the Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Company. Chartered on June 22, it was authorized to run eastward from Aberdeen into the pine forests of the Sandhills region, a sandy area with hiJohn Blue-smgh ridges covering about 1100 square miles in five North Carolina counties. The line's route was projected to pass through the rolling hills into Blue's native Cumberland County. The terminus given on the charter was to be along "the Rockfish Creek," hence the name.

Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad

The A&R Railroads take great pride in providing customers with prompt and efficient service for the shipment of virtually any type of commodity from raw materials to finished products. Comprising the Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad and the Pee Dee River Railway, our system has over 125 years of experience in providing personal service to Carolina customers. Together with our transportation partners CSX Transportation, Norfolk Southern, Tidewater Transit, Sterling Transport and Mid-Atlantic Transloading & Logistics, the A&R Railroads have access to some of the most cost effective routes and rates serving all of North America.

The A&R Railroads provide value-added services to move shipments fast and efficiently including route planning, negotiating through rates from origin to destination, finding and furnishing acceptable equipment, scheduling movements and tracking shipments. We assure consistently high levels of service through our dedicated and professional employees, some of who are third generation A&R. Helping customers gain advantage over their competition through lower logistics costs is our goal.

Aberdeen & Rockfish Company

The A&R 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