Murphy Branch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is uncategorized.

Please help improve this article by adding it to one or more categories, so it may be associated with related articles (how?). Please remove this tag after categorizing.
This page has been tagged since December 2006.

A Norfolk Southern General Electric Dash-8 diesel-electric locomotive assisted by an EMD GP50 climbs up through the Balsam Gap on the Murphy Branch between Waynesville and Sylva. (2002)

The historically important Murphy Branch is the western most part of what was the Western North Carolina Railroad, later the Richmond and Danville, Southern Railway and today the Norfolk Southern Railway. The branch runs between Asheville, North Carolina in the east and Andrews in the west. It roughly follows Interstate 40 and the Great Smoky Mountains Expressway. The railroad branch was constructed with convict labor between 1881 and 1894. Today the section of the branch between Asheville and Sylva is owned and operated by the Norfolk Southern Railway. The tracks between Dillsboro and Andrews are owned and operated by the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad, a tourist excursion railroad. Although the Murphy Branch is today divided between two separate companies, it is still a continuous rail line between Asheville and Andrews.

The tracks between Andrews and Murphy were pulled up in the late 1980's after Norfolk Southern decided to close the leg because of a lack of freight traffic. When the railroad began eying the rest of the Murphy Branch past Dillsboro for closure the state of North Carolina stepped in and purchased the tracks to keep the right-of-way alive. It later sold the tracks to the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad which had leased them from the state for a number of years. This section of the Murphy Branch has the distinction of being the first stretch of track the state ever purchased in modern times and began a long running practice for the state of North Carolina that eventually became the state's "Rails to Trails" program which maintains railroad rights-of-way for future use.

The Murphy Branch was extremely important to Southwestern North Carolina in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as it opened up the isolated and rural mountains west of Asheville to the outside world allowing easy travel and improved commerce. It can easily be said with confidence that these tracks made Western North Carolina what it is today.