When outside interests proposed a $4.4-billion atom smasher that would have literally undermined the neighborhood, Rougemont residents rose and stared down both the feds and the Raleigh and Durham big shots until the scheme went elsewhere.

When folks there decided they needed a traffic light, they badgered politicians for two years until they got one.

Three times, Rougemonters have gone to the state legislature asking to be incorporated as an official town. Each time, they have been stymied, but don't be surprised if they try again.

They're even going to get a town hall ready.

Starting today.

In case you haven't made its acquaintance, Rougemont is a community of 1,000 or so souls dispersed around the intersection of Red Mountain Road and U.S. 501.

Rougemont has a golf course, a castle (no kidding!), a stockbroker, a model-train repair shop, a diner and even an Easter Parade. The parade takes place the Saturday before Easter, that is, today; amid the festivity -- bonnet contest, egg hunts, car show -- Rougemont is breaking ground for its old train depot.

Yes, the old one. The historic one. The depot that is in two pieces in two places and has to move.

Rougemont's train station closed in the 1960s, and the Norfolk Southern later abandoned the line. Retired stationmaster John Anderson used the building for his lumber business for a while, then moved the old freight section to his yard for a barn and stable.

The ticket office-waiting room passed on to Mark O'Neal, who is donating it to the Rougemont Ruritan Club. Now, it still stands near the tracks on railroad property -- and the Norfolk Southern wants a hefty sum for rent and liability insurance. That's beyond the Ruritan Club's resources.

Now, Rougemont's is the last of many rural stations that once served Durham County. Country folks would catch the train to shop in Durham (getting off at the Renaissance Revival Union Station that Durham demolished in the name of downtown revitalization). The coal that fueled Durham's factories came down from the mountains by way of Rougemont.

The depot has a pedigree: "A one-room frame structure covered with vertical weatherboard siding and capped by a gable roof with exposed rafter tails and wide overhanging eaves. ... A simple sawn work gable ornament on the south facade adds a decorative touch," says the Durham County Historic Architecture Inventory.

So with all that in mind, the Ruritan Club has arranged to move the two components, put them back together, fix them up and turn them into a place for the community: a museum of railroading and Rougemont and, if and when incorporation comes to pass, municipal government.

Resident Don Mason has donated the new site -- right across Red Mountain Road and near the overgrown track, next to where the Rougemont Elementary School once stood.

But there's still a pretty big job ahead: building a foundation, moving the waiting room, moving the freight section, rebuilding the office, repairing everything that needs it with attention to historical detail, and furnishing the place -- and, all along, raising $50,000 or so to cover the costs.

"It's the last [old] train station in all of Durham," Rougemont booster Joe Haenn said. "It has some real history."

Likely, it has a future, too.