The Blue Ridge Railway was a 19th century railroad in the U.S. state of South Carolina. It was originally chartered in 1852 as the Blue Ridge Railroad of South Carolina. Original plans were for a 195-mile line from Anderson, South Carolina, to Knoxville, Tennessee going through the mountains with as many as 13 tunnels including the incomplete Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel.
By 1859, the railroad had built between Anderson and West Union, South Carolina and substantial work on several tunnels had started. However, with the outbreak of the Civil War, no further work was ever completed on the tunnels despite efforts after the war, including one by the Black Diamond Railroad. A final extension from West Union to Walhalla, South Carolina at the urging of the Town Council and local citizens saw the first train arrive November 14, 1877, but no more track would ever be laid along the alignment up Stumphouse Mountain. In 1880, the Columbia and Greenville Railroad acquired the 34 miles (55 km) of track that had been laid. In 1901 the Southern Railway, successor to the Columbia and Greenville, split out the line as the Blue Ridge Railway. The Southern leased the Blue Ridge to subsidiary Carolina and Northwestern Railway on July 1, 1951, and eventually merged the company.
Famous quotes containing the words blue, ridge and/or railway:
“One way to do it might be by making the scenery penetrate the automobile. A polished black sedan was a good subject, especially if parked at the intersection of a tree-bordered street and one of those heavyish spring skies whose bloated gray clouds and amoeba-shaped blotches of blue seem more physical than the reticent elms and effusive pavement. Now break the body of the car into separate curves and panels; then put it together in terms of reflections.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The self-consciousness of Pine Ridge manifests itself at the village’s edge in such signs as “Drive Keerful,” “Don’t Hit Our Young ‘uns,” and “You-all Hurry Back”Mlocutions which nearly all Arkansas hill people use daily but would never dream of putting in print.”
—Administration in the State of Arka, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)