Elm City, NC is between Wilson and Rocky Mount so I don't think Amtrak ever stopped there as they have historically stopped at larger towns. Atlantic Coast Line Local trains likely stopped there back in the 1950s. I don't have my Official Guides handy, but will check later.
Elm City, NC is between Wilson and Rocky Mount so I don't think Amtrak ever stopped there as they have historically stopped at larger towns. Atlantic Coast Line Local trains likely stopped there back in the 1950s. I don't have my Official Guides handy, but will check later.
Most of the local stops were discontinued when the Railway Post Office cars were curtailed in the mid 1960s. I worked at the Post Office in Jeffersonville, in 1966-68 while going to college. We still received and dispatched mail to RPOs. We picked up mail at Jeffersonville Pennsylvannia RR Station from the Chicago, Logansport and Louisville RPO which connected with a number of other RPOs. The RPOs actually had a mail slot where you could mail a letter while the train was stopped. It would have the RPO postmark on it. The Post Office discountinued the RPO in 1967 and the train came off not too long after.There are a number of sizeable towns along the original ACL through North Carolina that are not quite large enough for Amtrak to stop at. Elm City is one of them. Some others include Weldon (near the VA state line), Battleboro (north of Rocky Mount), Lucama (south of Wilson near Selma), Benson, and Dunn (both between Selma and Fayetteville).
While stopping at some of these places might generate ridership among people that are unwilling or unable to drive 20-30 miles to an existing Amtrak station, it would slow the schedules of the current trains significantly.
FWIW - In most cases Amtrak did not make the hard decision about where or where not to stop. Most, if not all, of these towns had already had their passenger service withdrawn with the discontinuance of the all-stop local trains in the mid-1960's. Amtrak merely began serving the larger towns which still had SCL passenger service in place May 1, 1971.
I'll add that when I lived in Fayetteville, NC (1994-98), there was a mon-n-pop ice cream shop in downtown Dunn that was a great destination on a summer evening....... go in and have some ice cream and then linger around to watch the southbound Auto-Train race through around 9pm ish.
Interesting. In India we had to write it along the top edge of the envelope.When I was little you had to write"air mail' on the lower left corner of the envelope if that is what you needed. I think my earliest memory is that it was three cents stamps for all mail. Later, you needed a 5 cent stamp for air mail, 3 cent otherwise.
My January 1961 Official Guide shows it being served southbound by trains 75, Havana Special and a flag stop for 49, a Rocky Mount-Wilmington local. Northbound, it was a stop for train 376, Everglades, and a flag stop for 42, Wilmington - Rocky Mount local.
There was a through Wilmington-New York Pullman on that local.
The Washington-Florence "Florida Mail" was gone by the 1961 Official Guide, as was the Washington sleeper.
None of these ever made it even close to AmDay (5/1/1971), so no, Amtrak never served Elm City.
Bet ACL was rethinking that "Havana Special" name in 1961!
In the 1951 Great Northern timetable there is a mention of mailboxes at railroad stations that would be emptied by passing mail trains, so that you didn't have to catch the RPO in the station. The larger stations even have west and eastbound boxes.The RPOs actually had a mail slot where you could mail a letter while the train was stopped. It would have the RPO postmark on it. The Post Office discountinued the RPO in 1967 and the train came off not too long after.
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