Greensboro pre-current station preservation

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Press release from North Carolina Railroad

North Carolina Railroad Collaborates to Preserve, Restore Historic Train Depot - North Carolina Railroad

Greensboro News and Record newspaper article and it might be paywalled by the time you get to the link

Back on track: Historic Southern Railway depot gets new lease on life with agreement

 

[joelkfla]

Press release from North Carolina Railroad

North Carolina Railroad Collaborates to Preserve, Restore Historic Train Depot - North Carolina Railroad

Greensboro News and Record newspaper article and it might be paywalled by the time you get to the link

https://greensboro.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/back-on-track-historic-southern-railway-depot-gets-new-lease-on-life-with-agreement/article_ea27ae5a-0c3a-11ed-a48c-af340a70f702.html

It's not paywalled but you inserted the link backwards. You put the URL in the description field, and the description in the URL field. Here is the correct link:

Back on track: Historic Southern Railway depot gets new lease on life with agreement

The building is in Greensboro's downtown district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for federal and state historic-preservation tax credits.

greensboro.com

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

It's not paywalled but you inserted the link backwards. You put the URL in the description field, and the description in the URL field. Here is the correct link:

Back on track: Historic Southern Railway depot gets new lease on life with agreement

The building is in Greensboro's downtown district listed on the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for federal and state historic-preservation tax credits.

greensboro.com

Thanks for the heads up. I am blaming the heat as I was thinking of the dread of having to go mow now. (But I am mowing today as I have a trip on Amtrak tomorrow so that is the motivation to get it done.

 

[joelkfla]

Press release from North Carolina Railroad

North Carolina Railroad Collaborates to Preserve, Restore Historic Train Depot - North Carolina Railroad

Greensboro News and Record newspaper article and it might be paywalled by the time you get to the link

https://greensboro.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/back-on-track-historic-southern-railway-depot-gets-new-lease-on-life-with-agreement/article_ea27ae5a-0c3a-11ed-a48c-af340a70f702.html

It's nice that they want to restore it, but IMHO it's not very grand in its current configuration. Unless they intend to add back the 3rd floor, or at least build a facsimile of the original roof, I think it's just going to look like a restored industrial building. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not particularly attractive architecturally IMO.

The North Carolina Railroad sounds like it was modeled after Amtrak. Hope they're having better luck with management & funding.

 

[jis]

The North Carolina Railroad sounds like it was modeled after Amtrak. Hope they're having better luck with management & funding.

Or one could more accurately say Amtrak was modeled after NCRR since NCRR was chartered in 1849! They have certainly lasted and one could almost say - thrived - way longer than Amtrak!

 

[joelkfla]

Or one could more accurately say Amtrak was modeled after NCRR since NCRR was chartered in 1849! They have certainly lasted and one could almost say - thrived - way longer than Amtrak!

Interesting -- did not know that. But was it always 100% owned by the state, or did the state of NC bail out a failing company?

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

The governor of NC at the time (1840s) was from Greensboro and made sure the line ran through Greensboro. The company leased the line to Southern around 1897 or 1899 for a century and I think it was a sweetheart deal. The state was majority owner but not 100% owner of all stock and that situation existed until the late 1990s. The state finally convinced the other stockholders to sell their stock in the 1990s and the lease agreement is now in the 20-25 year range with some options I am sure. The state pumps the money back into the line for improvements and can put pressure on NS for passenger trains, hence more Piedmonts. NCRR also helped fund a company to have rail access on the ACWR and helped even more with funds for a Toyota ( I think) EV battery on the NS CF-line just south of Climax, NC in Guilford County and mostly north of Liberty in Randolph County. So the state is using it for some economic incentives but in the case of the battery plant the NCRR will see more rail traffic on the NS main to get to the CF-line in Greensboro. The wye for the CF line connecting with the NS main line is just to the right of this building. The marble for this building came from Mt. Airy on the CF line when it was a an actual railroad it its own right and ran Mt. Airy to Sanford.

I think the individuals that owned NCRR stock was sort of like the situation with the freight companies owning stock in Amtrak. There is not going to be a dividend ever and the stock is not traded so it is not really a liquid asset like my one share of Webtec is convertible quickly to cash.


Burlington, NC was called Company Shops for a long time as that was the maintenance shops. The current station there has a nice diarama inside of the shops and the building was part of the shops. High Point was and I assume still it the highest point on the NCRR. During the depression a jobs program built the ditch and lowered the elevation a bit of the line and where there are steps down to the platform. I assume the location is still the highest. I know this location is right near a watershed boundary so both sides of the station in High Point is going down hill some.


Sorry for the long reply but I am avoiding going back outside to mow.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

It's nice that they want to restore it, but IMHO it's not very grand in its current configuration. Unless they intend to add back the 3rd floor, or at least build a facsimile of the original roof, I think it's just going to look like a restored industrial building. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not particularly attractive architecturally IMO.

The North Carolina Railroad sounds like it was modeled after Amtrak. Hope they're having better luck with management & funding.

I am hoping a restoration of the roof but it may just be a rebuild of the internals. I do want something that allows public access such as a sandwich shop or something that does not a grease trap which can be problematic. A deli with chips could work and keep rent low enough to keep it open. Maybe a small room with railroad history from the Greensboro History Museum a few blocks away.

 

[George Harris]

Wait a minute! What goes on here? Is this going to become the new Greensboro Station? I thought they had a very good station building near where the newly built platforms are located.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

This is the 1895-1927 station that eventually became NS office space. The current station has been the Greensboro station from 1927 to 1979 or so and then 2005 to present day after renovations to make it Amtrak, city bus transit, regional bus transit, Greyhound, and model train club space (give or take a year or two on all the above years.) Between 1979-2005 Greensboro used a small room at the Greensboro Freight Yard (Pomona) that above this room was the yard tower. That room is now NS Police space I think.

 

[rookzie]

Wait a minute! What goes on here? Is this going to become the new Greensboro Station? I thought they had a very good station building near where the newly built platforms are located.

No, they didn't say that it was going to be the "new station".

They said it was being purchased for preservation and redev as a historic landmark. No way that ever would return as the preferred site for the passenger station, as close as it is to S. Elm St., a very busy and critical level crossing in the heart of downtown. The current (Galyon) station better accommodates the multiple schedules of the "Piedmont" (along with that of the "Carolinian") and keeps the stops for these runs at Greensboro off the main line.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Since Amtrak has about a 10 min layover here I think some of the residents of my fair city that are less transportation-knowledgeable might set fire to the building. For some the freight trains passing through the crossing here are bad enough. Seeing a train not move for a quarter hour might be more than can take. (There is an underpass to go under the tracks right by the crossing and many cares do not use it, though some might like watching the trains.)

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

North Carolina Railroad annual report for 2022 is here

https://www.ncrr.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/NCRR_AR_2021_final.pdf

Page 40 has some good info on the history and current agreement.

 

[west point]

Could not find a page 40

 

[rookzie]

McCleansvilleApp Fan is referring to page 40 of the actual pdf file page, as enumerated within either a Web browser extension or in a standalone pdf viewing utility ─ or even on a smart phone.

The original document page number is "20", as displayed within the reading pane. Specifically, it's "Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements", sub-section 5. The "page" numbering of files in pdf format frequently does not match that of the converted document, unless the page numbering during "authoring" (conversion process) is adjusted manually to start (or in this case, restart) at a point other than at the first physical page ─ discounting formatting changes for appendices, indexes, etc.

Some pages within an original document may have no number at all. The "Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements" section actually begins on page 19 of the pdf file viewer application, but pages 19-21 of the viewer correspond to the embedded document, pages 0,1,2 ─ none of which is numbered in the embedded document. Compounding the page numbering issue, the file being viewed actually consists of two separate but concatenated original documents: 2021 Annual Report and Consolidated Financial Statements, each with its own numbering sequence. Hope this helps.

 

[jis]

Could not find a page 40

In the Acrobat Reader, open up the left sidebar to see the actual PDF page numbers.

 

[McLeansvilleAppFan]

Could not find a page 40

Explained above but I was counting the PDF pages. I think it was page 20 or 21 of a second document that was all part of one PDF file. I read the PDF inside of Firefox and the page numbers of the PDF were at the top of the web browser.