Welcome to the Saluda Grade

Today 2 April 03
The rails have been cut in Landrum and Saluda.
This is the first step in abandoning the rail line by the NS Railroad.

Pictures of the act of abandoning the rails

Visit the Carolina Heritage Line Page
www.saludagrade.org

The Carolina Heritage Line is trying to put in a passenger
service train between Spartanburg and Asheville which
would travel both ways - up and down the grade.
Meeting are in Saluda, North Carolina.

Norfolk Southern Pulls Plug on the Saluda Grade
No More Trains up and down the grade for a while!
Maybe forever!

Read all about it here.

Greer News Paper Published this article
about the grade. Very interesting reading.

Read all about it here.

Concerning all pictures featured in this web page.

ALL pictures either belong to Robin Michael in Tryon, NC
and www.polkcounty.org web site or the original publishers.

As such this is to inform you that all pictures have copyrights involved.

Camera Information
All personal pictures are either taken on a Olympus OM-2A with a number of lenses
of various focal lengths or on a Kodak Digital Zoom, Model 210 camera with
a 40 meg memory card holding up to 175 photos in HiRes.

I will be adding a lot more pictures and text
as it becomes available to me. Please check
back often for the updates or new arrow.

Most all of the pictures shown are in Thumb Format.
When you click on these thumb prints,
you will open a new window and have a
full size print with text about this print.

Please use your browsers back arrow for navigation.

Looking down Safety Track No. 2 at the foot of
the steepest part of the Saluda Grade.

The Last run of the 611 Steam Excursion up Saluda Grade. Please click on the pictures for a larger version. These are personal photos that I took at both locations. By the way when train chasing, one of the best ways to do it is from a motorcycle. Traffic does not slow you down when it is stopped! Just worm your way through and you are on the way to the next photo opt!

The track map of the Saluda Grade starting just south of Tryon, North Carolina and going just north of Saluda, North Carolina (Polk / Henderson County Line) are included in this section. This set of maps were reduced for down load size but the original scans are over 16 megs each, being done at 300 dpi.

Since the Saluda Grade is here in Polk County, North Carolina, and this is the Polk County Web Page, we have take the time to make this fantastic story of the Saluda Grade available to all who may or may not be train buffs. This history lesson is really quite good! While freight is all that is now carried on this line, passenger service used to be the mainstay of the line with up to 5 passenger trains a day both ways. Then add the freight trains and you had a lot of traffic on this line. Please feel free to read all about it.

Trains Magazine did a major article in November 1984 on the Saluda Grade. The first link will take you to a recreation of this article and all of the pictures that was associated with it. Again, this link is slow to load due to all of the pictures but is well worth the time and effort if you want to know something about the. . .

We have presented this story in two ways.
First it was scanned in as a HTML document and is on the first link.
Second we scanned it in hires PDF on the second link.

The beginning of the climb to Saluda. Tryon was considered the bottom of the grade with Melrose in the middle and Saluda at the top. Each town had siding for trains to pass on. While Tryon never was a marshalling yard it still had to hold trains pending track conditions and congestion at Melrose.

Pictures detailing some of the interesting areas as they now appear on the Saluda Grade. Most of the action happened in Melrose near the Safety Track No. 2. As such we have a collection of pictures on the link below that will allow you to see the area. All thumb prints will call a larger picture and text.

Saluda Switch and the top of the grade. Saluda is where all trains were split up or reassembled to go up or down the mountain. Pictures are of the trains that have a mandatory stop here prior to going down the grade.