This Post is Part of my Finally the Piedmont Trip
We sleep in a bit in the Quality. Enjoy an included overly processed breakfast (there were some of the most disgusting rubbery eggs I’ve ever witnessed). We make the 9:45 bus on its circular route back to the end of the Lynx Light rail at I-475. The stop is simple, no sidewalk, we wait on the grass with a trash can but luckily a small schedule (albeit with the next time point on the post)Boarding the bus we dip the day passes we pre-purchased the day before when we got off the Charlotte Transportation Center (that can only be activated on buses not at light rail TVMs that only sell previously activated day passes) and their stamped with an 11:59pm expiration time.
The bus gets us to the light rail at 9:55, the driver saying “See you tomorrow” to the dozen people getting off. This circular bus route provides a vital service getting workers to the low-income service sector jobs on the suburban fringe.
We spend the morning starting my station-to-station of the LYNX Light Rail, doing the southern half. It’s your basic modern light rail line with midday service every 15 minutes. We start by heading up to Arrowood, double-back to Sharon Road West, continue up to Archdale where passing trains mean we have to spend 15 minutes, go up to Woodlawn where a crew arrives to empty the TVMs of fares while were there. The destinations signs of the LRVs all say Welcome A.K.A 66, we have no idea what this means (what is also-known-as 66?) It turns out its because of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Leadership Convention going on.
Midday, I have a Piedmont points run/finishing the route trip booked up to Salisbury and back from Kannapolis. We make sure were downtown by 11:15 and get off at 7th Street to walk out to Tryon Street where we wait maybe 5 minutes for the next Route 11 Bus out to the Amtrak Station.
It’s a quick, under 10 minute ride and we don’t have to cross the street so we get off in front of the driveways into the station. Were back at the Amtrak Station at 11:30.
At 11:40 a line forms, their scanning in the station at the door to the tunnel out to the ramps up to the platform. We soon board go out through the tunnel. I grab some more platform photos, including our locomotive, F59PHI #1755, fittingly “The City of Salisbury.” I board towards the end of the long, slow line. The crew is only using one door and everyone seems to need help getting up the steps. We are back in the Grey Squirrel, the same car I rode yesterday morning. This is the car I rode yesterday morning with loads of legroom. We end up moving to a conference table in the former “smoking section.”
I grab some more Lounge Car photos of the vending machines before we leave, I’m sort of fascinated by this amenity and wonder if Amtrak should take out a couple of seats in all of the Ex-Metroliner Cab Cars and install machines for the foodless Keystone and Shuttle Trains. Don’t know how to take care of the food-less Empire Service Trains. These trains still operate with a Cafe car (and trainsets are shared with the two daily extended to Niagara Falls Empire Service Trains and the Ethan Allen Express).
We leave promptly at Noon, passing a protect engine, the City of Burlington that was on the back of #73 yesterday, sitting in a small yard north of the station. The conductor comes back for seat checks, remembering us going to Salisbury.
- 12:05 – I feel like we’re already in the country passing a diary, some construction.
- 12:07 – Take that back, pass Belle Haven a new subdivision.
- 12:09 – Going fast enough to beat the traffic on University City Blvd.
- 12:10 – See some track workers but no delays through the trees
- 12:14 – Pass a freight train on a siding and are back in the trees, I need to come down here in winter.
- 12:20 – Pass the antique and auto design mall.
- 12:23 – The announcement for Kannapolis as I see a church.
We arrive in Kannapolis at its fenced off platform at 12:25, the one intermediate stop on today’s quick out and back. We leave at 12:27, a bunch of NC Rail employees who have gotten on in Kannapolis file by to the lounge car. We pass houses and leave town following North Main Street by Brothers auto sales and churches.
- 12:33 – It flows into China Grove. I realize we’re following a Main Street that are minibus will take back.
- 12:41 – Get the announcement for Salisbury, were a few minutes late.
- 12:44 – We stop just before the station, track work. The conductors don’t know why. It turns out there is protection for grade crossing and track work, we soon pass the track gang.
Were on the track opposite the platform that doesn’t platform. We slowly pull beyond the station to the grade-crossing and are let off there to avoid walking on the ballast. The crew lowers a silver (not yellow stool). We arrive at 12:41, and walk down the ballast to the fenced off platform. There is a women with a walker getting off with us. The NC Station host has luckily walked up to the train with the wheelchair that lives next to the ADA ramp. I see him help her and (I assume a son) to the station and later into a taxi.
I do my photo essay of the historic station, unfortunately the main waiting room is now an event space. Amtrak has a small area in a former I assume Railway Express Area. Then we need to find our Rowan Express minibus to take us down to Kannapolis. The NC Station host tells me he doesn’t know where it is.
We check the bus loop for local buses that is across the street and just south of the station and find the stop. We board our minibus 7 minutes early pay our dollar fare into a tiny fare box and leave at 1:19, on time. Each set of seats has someone in them. We pull through a quite vibrant small town Main Street and take it following the train tracks. Passing a cemetery I see my name, Cox on a gravestone.
- 1:32 – Go over embankments up to a new overpass with just the concrete supports under construction over the railroad line.
- 1:38 – We enter China Grove (the one town in between) and I hear on the radio that someone has called who is looking for the bus. We stop in China Grove for three more.
- 1:43 – Pull into the Food Lion.
- 1:47 – We flow into Landis there is a green sign along the tracks.
- 1:50 – Leave Landis and follow the track again.
- 1:51 – Come into Kannapolis.
We walk into the station and check in with a wizened station agent who immediately goes bask to watching Matlock re-runs on television in her little office. Her attitude is “How Dare You Disturb Me”. I head outside to get my photo essay and have a bad moment when I’m on the other side of the tracks as a freight train slowly rolls through and hope I get back to the station in time. The NC Station Host eventually goes out to unlock it as we wait for our train that has gotten delayed going through the track work.
The agent lets us out just before the train arrives and I actually get a decent photo of it entering the station.
We finally leave at 2:40. We’re directed to board Scotch Bonnet, the intermediate car, the same car we rode on this same train yesterday.
At 2:50 we slow down and come to a stop outside Charlotte. We’re waiting for a passing freight, 15 miles from the Charlotte Amtrak Station. The engineer has left the locomotive while we wait and passing us asks if we got his good side.
- 3:17 – Still waiting, the NS dispatchers didn’t advise us when the freight train would actually pass. I feel like we’re waiting to come into Chicago.
- 3:22 – We start moving again, passing the freight train culprit
- 3:27 – Come to a stop again, so much for making it to the trolley museum. We’re then informed were waiting on a second train.
- 3:36 – We start moving, jolting ahead again. Passing a very short freight train with lumber.
- 3:44 – Pass more industry,
- 3:46 – Farmland again
- 3:47 – Pass a road as we keep entering. Then it’s over I-475, Chatolttes beltway road
- 3:52 – Newell Crossing, a subdivision with a clock tower at the entrance. Then follow construction
- 3:50 – We follow roads into town
- 3:54 – Pass another freight as we enter
- 3:58 – Keep entering, slowing down.
- 4:00 – Pass freight cars, see the protect locomotive and enter. We stop on the opposite track.
We arrive at 4:01, over an hour late. Getting off the train takes forever since the crew has only opened up one door and everyone seems to need help getting their luggage down the steps and off the train.
We then head back into the tunnel and into the station. We pass this sign at the edge of the parking lot about the safest thing you can do at this point is enter Tryon Street Safely. We debate jaywalking (the bus stop across from the station is fairly crowded) but decide to walk the third of a mile back to the nearest stoplight getting the 22 bus turning the corner. It’s packed and we take it for a short ride down to 8th street.
We get off there to walk over to 9th Street and photograph the former northern terminus of the Charlotte Trolley that ran on and off first before LYNX was concieved, was suspended during construction and resumed weekend service sharing the tracks with LYNX before being suspended for good in 2010.
We then walk down to LYNX Light Rail at 7th Street and begin finishing the system by walking through downtown. There is a path that follows a good portion of the route and we take this down through the Charlotte Transportation Center Station and to 3rd Street Convention Center.
We take regular streets around to Stonewall and then have an awful walk on a different bridge over I-277 to Carson, road a rush-hour crowded (standing room only, hard to board, LYNX needs more frequent rush hour service than every ten minutes) one-stop to Bland, walked to East/West, took the train back to Tyvola that we didn’t spend enough time at before. Then we went back to New Burn before doubling-back to Scalleybook to end the trip.
We went back downtown and found a Starbucks to get some work done, unforchunately it closed at 8:00.
Next we went and had a leisurely dinner, short-of killing time since we had nowhere to go before our scheduled 1:46am Crescent departure to return to New York. We soon learned it had lost an hour leaving Atlanta.
From about 10:30 to 11:30 we decided to kill another hour with a late night LYNX Ride, the ride southbound is crowded (were happy we boarded at the northbound terminus at 7th Street) with people coming back from a Charlotte Knights AAA Baseball game and Seriority sisters attending their convention. We get off at Sharon Road West and skip another visit to I-485/South Boulevard.
We take the train back to Convention Center (I want night photos of the unique design).
We start walking towards the Amtrak station and find a pizza shop for a midnight snack (were sitting inside at midnight) and to bide more time.