BONSAL - One hundred years ago a steam locomotive chugged daily through the New Hope Valley past pine trees, a sawmill and farmland plowed by oxen, before ending up in Durham.

The New Hope Valley Railroad has long since stopped making commercial runs. Small settlements were flooded over to create Jordan Lake. And the route of the original tracks is now part of the American Tobacco Trail.

But trains still run, thanks to the efforts of a nonprofit group. In 1983, the East Carolina Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society purchased the Bonsal rail yard and about six miles of track from the Southern Railway, which was about to demolish them. The group renamed the site the New Hope Valley Railway. Today, 50 to 60 of the organization's 100 members regularly meet at the rail yard to maintain the tracks and the cars and to run a small museum.

For nearly 19 years, the railway has offered train rides to the public the first Sunday of each month from May through December and on both Saturday and Sunday the first two weekends of December.

"We average about 600 to 700 people each time we run," said Bob Crowley, New Hope Valley Railway secretary and marketing manager. "Our record is 1,200."

On Sunday, a celebration marks the railroad's beginning, complete with train rides, speeches, bunting, patriotic music, barbecue and ice cream.

It's long overdue. There never was a big fuss to celebrate the first run of the New Hope Valley Railroad in 1906, Crowley said.

"The first train is always a big deal," he said. "Bunting, 76 trombones, mayors making speeches. It never happened here."

The Victorian-era inspired celebration will include speeches on the rear platform of a red caboose by U.S. Rep. David Price, state Rep. Paul Stam, Apex Mayor Keith Weatherly and Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison.

"I am going to get as close as I can to a 1906 celebration," Crowley said. "I'm still looking for a swallowtail coat and high hat like Teddy Roosevelt."

The original railway operation was known as the Durham & South Carolina Railroad and offered both freight and passenger service. Bonsal, briefly incorporated as a town in 1917, was named after one of the railroad's founding members. Train service stopped in 1981.

A 1945 hurricane that flooded Fayetteville and Wilmington led to the Jordan Lake Flood Control Project, which eventually signaled the end of the line for the railroad. Today, the gravel-filled rail yard is a museum filled with 15 cars, three cabooses and seven locomotives, including a black and red steam engine built in 19