Civil War disrupts operation of N.C. Railroad Company

Just when everything appeared to be clicking right along for the newly established North Carolina Railroad Company (NCRR), the War Between the States intervened to cause major disruptions in service.

 

Indeed, NCRR’s archives indicate that during the Civil War years (1861-65), railroad maintenance became difficult. “New rails were unattainable, and the railroad lacked the capacity to recondition old ones. The railroad made do by reusing rails pulled up from 17 miles of sidetrack and by operating the trains at slower speeds.” 

North Carolina historians Doug Wait and John deTreville noted that the railroad industry also “lost many skilled railroad crews and unskilled maintenance workers to the Confederate army. The result was a crippling deterioration of track, roadbed, equipment and service.” 

The NCRR added: “With passenger cars in short supply, soldiers often travelled in boxcars refitted with windows and rude plank board seating. The war’s conclusion in 1865 saw the railroad in a state of disrepair.” 

By 1867, though, “the roadbed, track and bridges on the whole line had been returned to reasonably good repair,” NCRR said. The Company Shops repair facility in Alamance County was a beehive of activity. 

However, in 1871, NCRR management signed a 30-year lease for operations and equipment with the Richmond and Danville Railroad (R&D). The R&D had its own repair and maintenance shops in Manchester, Va. (near Richmond).

 

Hence, NCRR’s Company Shops facility “subsequently lost some of its importance.” There was a serious reduction in the workforce. 

State historic marker officials acknowledge that the closing date is a printing error. 

The correct date is 1896. 

Historian Dr. George W. Troxler commented that the citizens of the Town of Company Shops grew dissatisfied with their association with the railroad that continued to downsize its operation. “Resentment toward the railroad led to a mass meeting” on Feb. 1, 1887. 

Residents argued back and forth. A citizen named John Lane remarked that he hadn’t heard “such a fuss since the law requiring all livestock to be penned up had been passed, just a short time before.” 

That controversial ordinance “resulted in the confinement of ‘Burlington,’ a Jersey bull belonging to Postmaster Daniel Worth,” who got the bull from a farmer in Burlington, Vt. The animal was viewed as the town mascot. 

Within a week, the state legislature passed a bill to change the town’s name from Company Shops to Burlington. The town’s post office also became Burlington in 1887.

 

In 1893, the R&D experienced financial troubles. Financier J. P. Morgan took control and formed the Southern Railway System.

 

Needing a “back shop” service facility on its eastern main line between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, the Southern Railway opened its own Spencer Shops repair complex in 1896 near Salisbury, N.C. At this time, NCRR’s Company Shops fell permanently out of use. 

More than a century later in 2001, the late Don Bolden, former editor of The Times-News in Burlington, reflected: “For three decades, the railroad was THE industry here. When those railroad shops closed, and the railroad left, the town could have died.”

 

But, he said, “Burlington is a community born of the railroad, bred on the loom and built on an ability to turn adversity into opportunity.” 

Cotton textile mills, hosiery manufacturing and a prosperous coffin factory “saved the town and its economy,” Bolden said. 

Fire destroyed much of the abandoned Company Shops railroad repair complex in 1918; only the engine house remained relatively unscathed. 

The Amtrak station in Burlington, opened in July 2003, is located in the former engine house. The renovated building, which also houses the NCRR Whistlestop Museum in its lobby, is called Company Shops Station.

The former train depot in Burlington has been transposed into a community parks and recreation center with an amphitheater. Here are two photos: