OVERVIEW - Carolina Coastal Railway (CLNA)

About twelve miles northeast of Washington, North Carolina is the hamlet of Pinetown. Two country stores abandoned and over-grown, a church, a few homes, and a two-stall fire station are all that marks this North Carolina town. Pinetown is also the western terminus of a seventeen-mile shortline that stretches through Acre, Terra Ceia, and Pantego to Belhaven.

Driving along the country roads here, you cannot miss the thin steel ribbons that undulate and race alongside the black-topped surface. Twice a week an engineer and a brakeman coax the vintage engine, snorting blue smoke from its nostrils, into the role of a rumbling bohemoth capable of evoking memories and imagination. Twice a week the chimes of the iron horse can be heard repeating a familiar pattern warning motorists of the giant's approach. And, twice a week the shortline delivers fully loaded hoppers and removes the empties amid the squeals of out-of-gauge curves, and the groans and cracks of over-worked sleepers. As the day ends, and after the empty cars are set out for the Class I carrier, the two-man team gingerly moves the 60 foot goliath onto a siding to sleep until awakened, sputtering, whirring, hissing and spitting, in a day or so.

Carolina Coastal Railway (CLNA) operates a 17-mile line between Belhaven and Pinetown, NC, serving the agricultural industry in Eastern North Carolina’s Beaufort County. Connections are made at Pinetown to the East Carolina Business Unit of Norfolk Southern Railway and at Belhaven to a barge facility. The railroad has sites available for industrial development and transloading.

*Photo by J. Stuart Connell