The Southern Highland Reader

SYLVA–Last year, when automobile gas prices were through the roof, CSX railroad began running obvious ads, making a point the industry could’ve been making all along: it makes more sense to pull a couple of hundred trailers with two or three engines than a couple of hundred trailers with a couple of hundred engines.

Well, no kidding. That’s true no matter how pricey gas becomes.

CSX’s tagline – “our trains can move a ton of freight 436 miles on a single gallon of fuel” – has become a fighting slogan for the entire industry lately, as the prevailing economic and environmental winds begin to signal a railroad renaissance.

Financier Warren Buffet’s purchase of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad recently drove the point home. Said Adam Hochberg on National Public Radio: “Buffett’s $44 billion acquisition, via his company Berkshire Hathaway, is one of a number of signs that freight railroads are in resurgence. While they may have been thought of as passé in the 1960s and 1970s, they’re now playing a vital role in the transportation system.”

Lobbyists for the asphalt and trucking companies, who for so long thought railroads were kaput, still make the argument that logistically, trucks work better.

“You can’t back a freight train up to the Harris Teeter,” one industry rep told Business North Carolina not long ago.

But some industry analysts believe that almost any regulations created to fight emissions will favor railroads, and that logistical issues with moving goods on the local level are easily overcome – in fact, are already overcome in some cases by the use of containers that can then be moved to flatbed trucks.

Closer to home, the topic reminds me of a sidewalk conversation I had in Sylva when gas was at it’s peak. “Before long,” my friend told me, “we’ll be able to ride a train to Asheville.”

I’m not sure I’m buying that – the cost of the necessary trestle work between Sylva and Waynesville alone would raise even Buffet’s eyebrows – but it is safe to assume that freight trains (which are allowed to run on ricketier tracks than passenger trains) aren’t going anywhere soon, even from our area.

A representative from Norfolk Southern Railway told me as much not long ago, saying that the line between Asheville and Sylva, which Norfolk Southern owns, is a money maker. The expansion of Jackson Paper Manufacturing in Sylva can only help.

As for true passenger rail, though, most of its advances will be focused on the cities.

Still, mountain residents can catch Amtrak in Toccoa Falls, GA, or Greenville, SC and ride the Southern Crescent southwest toward New Orleans or northeast toward Washington, through the Piedmont and to all points beyond.

Proponents of the long-fought-for return of passenger rail to Asheville are still at it, so that Amtrak spur — which would run up the mountain from the Piedmont — is still a possibility. (The two links in the previous sentence are from the Asheville Citizen-Times, here’s a Twitter report from MountainXpress from a recent Asheville Rail Corridor meeting).

And plans for the long-considered magnetic levitation train between Atlanta and Chattanooga and perhaps on to Nashville just got an infusion of federal cash. Maglev trains, used widely in Japan and Europe, achieve speeds of some 300 mph, mainly by not touching the ground.

If you don’t plan to hop a train anytime soon, but still like to think about them, this post from Ruminations from the Distant Hills and this one from Appalachian History might tickle your fancy. And here’s a history of the WNC Railroad from Tim Osment for WCU’s Digital Heritage.

Here’s a phenomenal flickr set, if you like to look at pictures.

CHATTANOOGA–David Uchiyama at the Chattanooga Times Free Press writes about the legacy of Stephen Curry, who earned all-America stripes while leading tiny Davidson to the elite eight of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Curry left Davidson a year early, was drafted way up the NBA list, and now plays for Golden State.

Uchiyama talked to multiple SoCon coaches for the piece, which discusses Curry’s impact on the league.

A snip:

“Players like that graduate, he just went a year early,” Western Carolina coach Larry Hunter said. “Somebody else is going to fill those shoes this year, next year or down the road.

“Hopefully for the conference, there will be a few and they’ll come quick.”

Read the whole piece here.

REGIONAL–John Frierson at the Chattanooga Times Free Press is one of a dwindling few sports journalists who covers the Southern Conference in a thoughtful way.

In a recent Sunday piece he takes a good look at SoCon football “money” games.

An excerpt:

While FCS teams have been taking beatings (usually) and cashing big checks from big-time opponents for years, the money is more than ever a crucial revenue stream now, according to Samford athletic director Bob Roller. The Bulldogs open their season at Central Florida on Sept. 5, and that game is expected to earn Samford more than $250,000.

“We absolutely have to have one,” Roller said of the guarantee games. “It’s a salve. (The money) will all be used and it will go toward the athletic department, not just football.”

Another:

Appalachian State, again a preseason favorite to win the national championship, isn’t facing the same kind of financial difficulties that UTC, Furman and some other SoCon schools are having to endure. Because of the Mountaineers’ recent success — three straight national championships from 2005 to ’07 — donations and ticket sales remain strong. In eight games last season, counting the playoffs, ASU’s average attendance was 25,161.

That strong financial footing allows the Mountaineers to schedule games against bowl subdivision teams with an eye toward opportunity, rather than money — the win at Michigan to open the 2007 season being a prime example.

“I’d hate to think that we’d ever get into the situation where we’re playing these games for financial reasons,” Appalachian State athletic director Charlie Cobb said, “but I understand that some schools have to do that.”

Read Frierson’s piece — along with a sidebar list of league money games — here.

REGIONAL-Massive manufacturing plants are few and far between in the U.S. these days, and our region, which built an economic reliance on large factories during the 20th century, has seen most of them pack up and leave.

So Volkswagen’s plans to construct a massive manufacturing facility on the Murphy side of Chattanooga, with some 2,000 jobs in the offing, comes as interesting news. The dollar’s weakness against the euro, among other factors, brought the plant to Tennessee.

One of those other factors was a comprehensive economic development strategy executed by Hamilton County, TN, and the city of Chattanooga.

While enormous factories may not be a practical or desirable goal for our mountain counties in 2008, smart and aggressive economic development efforts clearly are.

Thorough coverage of VW’s plans can be found at the Chattanooga Times-Free Press.

For those of us who’ve spent our lives in these mountains, it’s hard to wrap our imaginations around the idea of water shortages. Memories of summers prior to the mid-nineties include regular afternoon thundershowers, and regular large, wet storm systems from the Gulf of Mexico year around.

I admit my evidence above is circumstantial, but the rock-hard dryness of the past decade – whatever the cause – is fact, and now people in poorly-planned communities with sketchy water supplies are starting to feel a pinch.

There has been strong coverage lately of the woes of Southwestern US residents. They’re building cities where there is no water, and now are scrambling to address the issue. A good overview can be found here.

We’ve had a little relief lately, but the drought persists, and Atlanta’s much-publicized nervousness about its supply is manifesting itself in odd ways. Across the AP wire today comes a piece about a centuries-old border disagreement between Tennessee and Georgia. Seems that when the boundaries were surveyed, the line was placed a couple of miles too far south.

If the maps were re-drawn, Georgia would have a chunk of Chattanooga. More significantly, though, the peach state would contain the headwaters of the Little Tennessee River. If this sounds like a joke to you, you’re not alone. But they are, at least partially, serious.

More holdings-forth on this from the Chattanooga Times Free Press here, here and here.

POSTSCRIPT 4.6.08

We see by way of the AP wire that North Carolina and South Carolina are methodically re-surveying their border to “within a centimeter,” from Ellicott’s Rock (where, NC, SC and GA meet), to the sea. Most of the border, the story reports, hasn’t been checked since at least 1815. The original surveying was rudimentary, of course, and occasionally off the mark. There are no significant border disputes between these states, but much of the border is the same that was surveyed by Ellicott in 1811 and is the one in dispute in the Georgia/Tennessee ruckus.