An editorial and a story from Trains:

The level of destruction is really unbelievable. I wonder how much will be rebuilt; not sure all lines have the level of traffic to justify the expense?

Hi All,

A nearly identical event happened in the same area 7-1916. It mostly affected Southern Ry property but other roads were involved as well. A really good read was published by the Southern Ry on how several hundred miles of washed out roadbed, bridges, filled tunnels etc was repaired in about 2 weeks and trains running again called The Floods of July, 1916. It can be downloaded free from the NC DOT website at

https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/Det ... tem=620478

It is about 66M in size. Photos are incredible as well as the story.

Blessings!

Allen Stanley
About 40 miles below the epicenter

The damage on the CSX (former Clinchfield) from Spruce Pine, NC to Erwin, TN is pretty immense. Nothing has been posted about the tracks south of Spruce Pine known as “the loops”. They begin north of Marion, NC climbing the grade to Altapass, NC a few miles south of Spruce Pine. If you’re not familiar with this section, it’s a pretty amazing piece of civil engineering with 16 tunnels and numerous curves. You can see much of it from a single overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’m guessing the potential for damage there is high.

At any rate, this special mechanized ballast dispensing train was spotted moving north through Marion, NC about 2 PM today, so repair work is already started.

https://youtu.be/P62XTMihms8

At least this is not the showstopper for multiple railroads the way Agnes was.

Well it’s hit CSX and NS pretty hard and they are the only class ones in the area. Sounds like CSX will rebuild but financially the justification for NS is more difficult.

Mostly because Agnes was its own 'plant rationalization' to the financially deficient carriers who didn't have the resources to rebuild.

Suspect the 'rasion detra' to rebuild or not, will end up being loads originated and terminated on the damaged lines and does the line have to be rebuilt in its entirety to obtain most of those revenue loads.

The difference is that there aren't the same "multiple railroads" in the mega-merger era. If we were dealing with the railroads of old, lines impacted would include multiple districts of the Southern, the L&N, the Clinchfield, N&W, Virginian, Seaboard Air Line, C&O, and probably several feeder short lines now long gone such as the Graham County, Haysi, Beech Mountain, etc.

And let's not forget lots of SAL and ACL lines in Florida, either.

From June 1972, confirming speculation appearing in this thread, as the initial damage reports of Hurricane Agnes were discussed at Penn Central's Morning Conference, a certain erudite VP is widely remembered as saying:

"What God has put asunder, let no man join!"

Even Agnes put a lot of stuff deep underwater, but still generally left the waterway grades intact. Washouts on cross drainage were bad, some places like the Canisteo on the EL took a beating. Lower Susquehanna on PC took a beating.

In NC, there's a lot more vertical drop - heck, I've done Class 4 whitewater rafting in the French Broad beside the NS Knoxville line. Lot more water force there. For miles.

It didn't just flood, it took MILES of parallel roads and tracks and just obliterated them and put the new flow channel there. The only thing I've ever seen like it was on the Greenbrier down at Cass, where the parallel C&O railroad was just obliterated in the '84 storm and the tracks were in the river instead of beside it. That track just got put back last year, and only by essentially digging a new roadbed out of the mountainside, forget the old alignment.

Most times you've got cross-drainage blowouts and some obliterated bridges (with remaining piers) this just looks much more severe over longer stretches.

Part of the irony on flood repairs on both roads and tracks is that there's a huge concern on fills, construction, etc. for potential sedimentation. Never mind the fact that the flood did WAY more damage to a stream than reconstruction would, wiping habitats out clean. A whole lot of North Carolina was headed for the Atlantic Ocean, like it or not.

^ This photo gives a good indication of the amount of water that came through the area. This is an old photo of the Clinchfield (now CSX) across the Nolichucky River near Poplar, NC showing the normal water level. This bridge was swept away during the flooding. Luckily the piers appear intact.

Good news on the Blue Ridge Sub yesterday; video posted to the Clinchfield Railroad group on Facebook shows a train of side dump hoppers headed north filling in a minor washout at the Catawba River just north of Marion.

Work has started.

I'm wondering when we will hear official plans for what NS intends to do.

The Cass flood was in '85. I walked the line to Durbin with someone else about a year later, photographing the damage in various places all the way to Durbin. It took hours. I had trouble trying to match up scenes I had photographed in '85 with what was left after the flood. I never thought it would be restored and took about 35 years for that to happen. Of course it wasn't needed for commercial freight operations, so we'll see how much of this damage gets repaired.

Here's the first part of your answer:

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... ee-months/

Still assessing the Old Fort-Asheville line.......