This NC railroad that brought soldiers home from war is still an economic engine

The 125-acre industrial site on the southeast side of town has access to natural gas, water and sewer lines and a railroad track that runs along the edge of the property.

Interested companies can contact the Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad, which owns nearly half of the Iron Horse Park property near the Moore and Hoke county line.

The website for the A&R, a 125-year-old short-line railroad, advertises the site, as well as several other available properties along its line between Aberdeen and Fayetteville. Instead of waiting for new customers to come to it, the railroad works to bring in new business for itself and for the counties the railroad calls home.

“I think the bigger challenge we face is just finding opportunities to grow business,” said Garland Horton, the company’s president. “That’s our single largest challenge, finding new industry to locate along our railroad.”

The A&R is one of 19 short-line railroads in North Carolina that stretch through most of the state’s 100 counties. While large railroads such as CSX and Norfolk Southern connect North Carolina to the rest of the country, it’s often these small, locally owned railroads that carry goods the last few miles to and from businesses in small towns and rural areas.

Founded in 1892 by John Blue, the A&R has branched in many different directions over the years, but it’s most known for its mainline from downtown Aberdeen through Raeford to Fayetteville. The 46-mile track has carried thousands of tons of freight, from timber to crops to chemicals, and at one time carried passengers. The A&R also played an integral part in the creation and expansion of Fort Bragg, hauling construction materials and more than 500,000 soldiers to the base during World War II.

The A&R has survived through depressions and two world wars all under the guidance of its founding family. Unlike many short lines, the A&R has been owned by the Blue family for the entirety of its 125 years.

A century of proactivity

While the A&R has been profitable for most of its life, Bill Blue, a current member of the railroad’s board of directors, attributes its recent success to the leadership of former president Edward Lewis, who served from 1987 to 2007 and was the first person the Blue family hired from outside the company.

It was Lewis’s idea to acquire a five-mile line from Dunn to Erwin in Harnett County in 1987 and operate the Pee Dee River Railway, a 15-mile line from McColl to Bennettsville in South Carolina, for Marlboro County after CSX abandoned the lines. Not long after it began running the South Carolina line, Williamette Industries built a $350 million fine-paper mill at the southern end of the railroad that still supports the A&R today.

“It was remarkable what he did to this sleepy little railroad,” Blue said about Lewis. “He was looking for opportunities. He wanted to grow, and he did.”

The A&R and Lewis responded not only when there were new opportunities but also when something wasn’t as profitable anymore. Following the closure of a Burlington Industries textile mill along the Dunn-Erwin line, A&R pulled up the track and donated the route as a nature trail.

The Pee Dee River Railway has remained a crucial piece of the A&R’s survival, bringing in double the business of the Aberdeen to Fayetteville line. Horton said the railroad already is working with Marlboro County to renew the lease to operate the railway.

“It’s been a good little operating railroad,” Horton said. “We hope we can continue to operate it for the county for a long time into the future.”

While A&R has come to rely more on business near Fayetteville and along the Pee Dee River Railway over the years, business on the Aberdeen end of the track has slowed.

“We try very hard to locate industry, but the industry really has located in South Carolina,” Blue said. “It’s sad to say South Carolina is more aggressive than North Carolina.”

But that doesn’t mean A&R leadership has stopped trying to support their home base. A&R leaders continue to work to attract new business between Aberdeen and Raeford, the county seat of Hoke County, by promoting 50- to 100-acre industrial sites like the one near the county line.

The sites are state certified, which means detailed information has been compiled about the land, utilities, environmental concerns and potential development costs so construction can begin as soon as possible.

“When you’ve got industries coming around today looking to build a plant, they don’t want to wait,” Horton said.

And the A&R uses trucks and larger railroads to strengthen its business instead of competing against them. The railroad connects CSX and Norfolk Southern to stations where goods are offloaded onto trucks to be transported to their final destination, combining the price advantage of rail with the flexibility of trucks.

“It’s no longer a we-versus-them situation,” Horton said. “Our railroad wouldn’t exist but for our connections with CSX and Norfolk Southern.”

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 1:46 PM with the headline "This NC railroad that brought soldiers home from war is still an economic engine."