OURHAMLET.ORG

Thanks to Tom MacCallum for these articles.

Regarding the item about the Rockingham and Hamlet airport... I didn't know that the ACL road was at one time in Richmond County but I see that it was once the road that the Rockingham and Bennettsville RR ultimately ran on. "Keep your eyes and ears open and you'll learn something every day" so said my Dad. And he was right.

Great memories. I enjoyed looking at the pictures and reading the old newspaper articles. Peace.

Bruce,

The Rockingham Railroad was really a subsidiary of the ACL. A lot of big railroads back then had short branch lines that had different names but were really part of the bigger company. They often got hand-me-down equipment and rolling stock from the big railroad, and the steam engine that Rockingham had probably started its working life on the Coast Line.

Another example of that near Hamlet was the Winston-Salem Southbound Railway, which ran from Winston-Salem to Wadesboro, where the line became ACL to Florence. It was jointly built (in 1910) and owned by the ACL and Norfolk & Western, to which the line connected on its northern end. Both parent railroads contributed locomotives, but they were lettered WSSB.

There is a bridge on U.S. 74 just east of Wadesboro that appears to have no reason for being there, but it's because shortly after it was built, the ACL abandoned its Florence-Wadesboro line that the bridge crossed over. The portion of the railroad from Winston-Salem to Wadesboro is -- as the result of many railroad mergers since 1910 -- jointly owned by Norfolk Southern and CSX. It still operates as Winston-Salem Southbound. Now it connects to CSX in Wadesboro and its trains operate from Winston-Salem to Hamlet.

Jody

Jody, your post about the Rockingham Railroad sent me off on a google search and I discovered that I had been mistaken for more than 65 years about that road. I have always referred to that road as the Rockingham and Bennettsville Railroad but my google search did not reveal any such road, only the Rockingham Railroad. So now it looks like I'll have to go back into my Hamlet tales and make corrections. But, then again, maybe I won't... who's going to know the difference anyway?