Downtown Fayetteville and the Little Locomotive That Could

Recently I was booked for a “society gig” in Pinehurst, North Carolina. For those of you that aren’t familiar with this southern icon, it is a golfing resort. Nestled in the rolling sand hills of the piedmont, it is flanked by long leaf pine trees. Pinehurst has a unique look due to these trees. It also suffers from the same ills as Fayetteville when brown pine needles fall from the branches of the tress. They leave a mess on the streets. Pinehurst is an anomaly. It is one point of a triangle shared with Southern Pines and Aberdeen. The Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad connects Aberdeen to Fayetteville, and everyday their fleet of GP classed locomotives chug into the yard in Fayetteville. When traveling to Pinehurst via Plank Rd. on the fringe of Ft. Bragg, one never knows where the train will be. It, like most railroad track, is hidden. Likewise Ft. Bragg has an ammunition dump that is serviced by their spur that runs to Aberdeen from the station in downtown Fayetteville. The Aberdeen and Rockfish Railroad shares their yard with the Norfolk Southern, which is a Fortune 500 company. A trunk line from their shared yard transects downtown Fayetteville and connects to the CSX-T Milan yard. It seems synonymously with White House political “spin,” no one involved in the downtown revitalization project wants to acknowledge its true colors. The historical block of Old Fayetteville, the one that borders our Market House, is in close proximity to this railroad activity. Downtown Fayetteville, like most turn-of-the-century American towns, is built around its railroad station. The unfortunate thing is the double railroad tracks that run through downtown Fayetteville are the mainline of the CSX-T. CSX-T is an acronym coined by former Secretary of the Federal Treasury John Snow which represents the Chessie System and Seaboard Coastline. The two merged to form the new congomerate with X meaning “unknown” much like “Generation X.” T stands for transportation. The CSX-T mainline runs parallel to interstate I-95 and covers the entire length of the East Coast. Conservatively a train uses the line every fifteen minutes. That makes Fayetteville more unique than any other city in North Carolina, because its downtown station is not for a quaint short line railroad. Major railroad traffic passes through Fayetteville 24/7. The system I just described is the support system for mass transited rail freight. Goods that are shipped to and from Fayetteville such as vegetable oil from Cargill and fuel for Ft. Bragg must be sorted in these yards. This is a dirty, busy, and time consuming process. Unfortunately no matter how you spin that reality, it can’t change the reality that Historic Downtown Fayetteville is part of this geography. One reason why domestic activity has never flourished downtown is because trains are running all day. Quiet lunches, refreshing happy hours, and recreational shopping are not coincident with the sorting of freight by hulking, heat-producing, diesel prime movers. We no longer live in a nostalgic era of steam where the chug of the engine and the toot of the whistle remind us of happier times. We live in an era of massive transportation and logistical technology. The railroads are in direct competition with trucking companies, and they are continually trying to find ways to dominate. One such solution to this healthy competition was the foray into Alternating Current Traction. Traction for those of you who don’t know is a term for pulling weight efficiently on the rails. Traditionally locomotives have been equipped with Direct Current traction motors that are built into the axles of the trucks. The diesel “prime mover” is not responsible for turning the wheels of the locomotive with linkage and gearing from its drive shaft. Instead the diesel engine produces vast amount of electricity by turning either a generator or an alternator. A generator is need for the production of DC power. An alternator is needed for AC traction motors. AC motors have no brushes like the alternator in your car, so theoretically they will not wear out. This was the major incentive to begin using AC traction motors instead of the traditional DC counterpart. Maintenance costs were prohibitively high with DC traction, so the railroads were looking for a more cost effective method of moving heavy freight. The rolling foothills of Appalachia provided a sizeable obstacle for the transportation of coal from the mines to the coal-fired power plants. AC traction was devised by Siemens, General Electric, and General Motors as a solution to this problem. Jointly there were able to produce a new breed of alternating current traction motor locomotives. In the process of designing these mega machines the scope of the traditional railroad locomotive grew. They, like their DC counterpart the C40-9W, bulged at the seems. The diesel prime mover got larger and more powerful, hence its capability to haul more freight with fewer locomotives in a “consist.” Two AC locomotives now could replace a string of traditional DC powered locomotives saving the railroads money. So far the effects of this new breed of locomotive have not been studied. Instead a situation has occurred that is not dissimilar to the Iraq War. The true nature of AC Traction has been covertly disguised. Business has continued as normal while a festering and infected pocket of puss has continued to form. This puss has manifested itself in various ways in the human race. Drug companies have capitalized on its existence by offering pharmaceutical solutions to created symptoms, while no one has even attempted to isolate the cause. It is due time that its ills become known to the mainstream, so its long lasting effects finally can be pinpointed and corrected. It is not unusual for a business community to want to flourish. It is unusual for a group to market something as something it is not. While a burgeoning and humanistic Downtown Fayetteville may seem pleasant, it will never come to pass until the ill effects of AC traction are exposed and conquered.