news-record.com

GREENSBORO — In 1941, you could stand beside the railroad tracks in rural Guilford County and commute to Winston-Salem or Greensboro.

According to a 1941 Southern Railway timetable, passenger trains could be flagged

down at:

• Friendship, a forgotten community on what’s now West Market Street extension across from the Piedmont Triad International Airport.
• Down the tracks at Guilford Station, where College Road crosses West Market.
• Farther east in the Terra Cotta community at Norwalk Street.
• At Pomona, along what’s now Spring Garden Street.

On different tracks, between Greensboro and Reidsville, a man named Jess, a handyman in downtown Greensboro, commuted in the 1940s and 1950s by train from Reidsville.

Many years before that, Judge Robert Dick hailed a train daily in front of his house across the tracks from Fisher Park. He rode a few blocks to his downtown law office.

The flagging system was an early form of commuting. Now, transportation experts predict a sophisticated commuter system will be needed to get people and cars off crowded Triad highways.

In the old days, at some of the smallest depots such as Friendship, a red flag alerted an approaching train to stop for a passenger. Although autos had become more plentiful — railroads saw a decline in passenger traffic in the 1930s — some people depended on flagging to get to Greensboro or places beyond.

During World War II, a soldier in Terra Cotta, now part of Greensboro, could flag a train to Greensboro to make connections to take him to a faraway military base.

All the tracks remain that made possible this flag stop commuting, except for the northern part of old Atlantic & Yadkin line that paralleled Battleground Avenue.

Before the A&Y ceased passenger service in 1936, one could commute between downtown and Battleground (site of Guilford Courthouse National Military Park), Summerfield and Stokesdale.

The state hopes to bring back a smaller version of the 50 or so passenger trains that once served Greensboro, Charlotte and Raleigh.

The rail division of the N.C. Department of Transportation has announced that a second Raleigh-Charlotte passenger train, the “Piedmont,” will start running and stop in Greensboro in June. A third train is scheduled in 2012. They will join the Carolinian, which runs daily from Charlotte to Raleigh and New York and the Amtrak Crescent, a New Orleans-New York train that stops here.

Amtrak says eight Raleigh-Charlotte trains are needed to make commuting convenient.

The flag-stop system likely won’t return, but scheduled stops in the Piedmont are spaced so that people living in say, Graham, need only go few miles to Burlington to catch the train. Plans are also on the drawing boards for smaller trains — so-called “light rail” — that would perhaps serve outlying communities such as Jamestown and the growing bedroom town of Summerfield.

At Jamestown, either existing tracks (between Charlotte and Greensboro) could be used or another set built in the same right of way. For Summerfield, it would mean rebuilding tracks to replace tracks removed in the 1970s.

The state would like to run trains again to Winston-Salem, after a 40-year absence, and on to Asheville. Wilmington wants a return of passengers trains after a long absence.

Creating new trains and a commuter system will require costly track upgrades, new equipment and new stations.

Looked at another way, it would be doing what was done before.

Contact Jim Schlosser at 601-9879 or beale1@clearwire.net