Carolina Coastal Railway ( reporting mark CLNA ) is a shortline railroad that operates several lines in North Carolina and one line in South Carolina . According to its current website, the railroad spans 179 track miles and operates sixteen locomotives.
7-571: CLNA was created in 1989 under the Thoroughbred Shortline Program of Norfolk Southern and was a subsidiary of Rail Link, Inc., which became a subsidiary of Genesee & Wyoming in 1995. The original line was 17 miles (27 km) from Pinetown, North Carolina to Belhaven . CLNA interchanged with NS at Pinetown. CLNA was acquired by Main Line Rail Management, Inc. in 2003. In 2006, CLNA began to serve
14-599: A former NS branch between Whitney and Badin where Alcoa previously operated a large aluminum plant. On March 25, 2007, CLNA entered into a lease agreement with NS for the Plymouth - Raleigh route, 147 miles of the former mainline of the original Norfolk Southern . In 2010, CLNA began providing contract switching services in Kinston, North Carolina . In 2011, CLNA began serving the Port of Morehead City by taking over
21-574: The Morehead and South Fork Railroad . The CLNA also purchased a line between Rocky Mount and Spring Hope previously known as the Nash County Railroad , and began operating a former NS branch between Blacksburg, South Carolina and Kings Creek, South Carolina . Operations on this branch ceased in 2013. In 2020, the railroad was purchased by Regional Rail . Thoroughbred Shortline Program The Thoroughbred Shortline Program
28-473: The lease and eventual purchase of the line. The program ran from 1988 to 1991, creating more than a dozen new shortline railroads, nearly all of which are still in operation today. The period following railroad deregulation under the provisions of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 spawned a plethora of railroad rationalization programs. In addition to outright abandonment of low density routes, many of
35-594: The more promising lines were sold to shortline operators. A reoccurring problem was that many of these new railroads were often so overburdened by the costs of purchasing the infrastructure they operated on, that they lacked the capital to expand their customer base and improve their railroads. Norfolk Southern explored the creation of its own rationalization program in 1987, with the goal of reorganizing 2,700 miles (4,300 km) of low density lines spread throughout their 27,000 miles (43,000 km) of track. 1,500 miles (2,400 km) of track were abandoned outright, with
42-549: The remaining tracks slated to be distributed to shortlines. The result was the creation of the Thoroughbred Shortline Program. A key fixture of the Thoroughbred Shortline Program included leasing, as opposed to selling, railroads to shortline operators. This spared the new startups from expensive costs of taking out loans for mortgage payments on the railroads. The second component of the program involved crediting carloads delivered to Norfolk Southern by
49-540: Was a system of shortline creation devised by Norfolk Southern in the late 1980s. It involved an alternative to the typical practice of a Class I railroad selling rail lines outright to shortlines in the post- Staggers Act era. Defining features of the program included leasing lines to shortline operators, as opposed to outright sales, keeping stations available in Norfolk Southern marketing campaigns, and crediting carloads delivered to Norfolk Southern towards
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