Railroad tracks have for many years connected Beaufort County. Like sewing fabric pieces together, the railroad stitched together town to forest, country field to local waterway and county to region and nation. Trains made possible mass migrations of people, carried them to experience adventures and even new lives.
Many local folks love and know a great deal about trains. The railroads have been an important part of our local history and economy since the mid-1800s; indeed, trains are still with us, still evolving. Around the holidays, communities often feature vintage, model train displays. Belhaven’s model train display has become a holiday tradition. The oldest and youngest of persons seem to especially love trains, both real ones and “toy” model trains. What child-at-heart can resist a mechanical object that can “go” and make such awesome sounds?

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Did you know the first railroad to enter Washington (in 1877), was nicknamed “The Jolt and Wiggle”? The Jamesville and Washington Railroad and Lumber Company built a train depot at the corner of Washington and West Main Streets, near the river’s edge. Our railroad history is bound up with our lumbering history. The J&W RR was founded to access the vast, quality timber lands south and east of Jamesville in Beaufort and Martin counties and to transport the lumber to the Pamlico River where it went out by ship. Behind the depot were wharves. This steam train featured two wood-burning engines. The engineers had to stop frequently for more wood for fuel and more water to make steam. In addition to the flat cars that held lumber, there was one small passenger coach. Today, the depot stands on the same spot, but was converted to a hotel and then a home known as “Riverside/The Winfield home.”
Did you know the first train station in Washington, now the Washington Civic Center and old train depot (across from Bill’s Hot Dogs) was built by taxpayers of Washington? In 1890, the voters passed a bond proposal to raise $10,000 for purchase of terminal property for a branch of what was known as the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad. It later became the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad (ACL) and eventually the CSX line. The first ACL train entered Washington in 1892. Did you know that passenger trains were racially segregated? One old picture shows Old Engine No. 930, an ACL train, year 1942. It was described as a rebuilt Copper Head, having double combo “Jim Crow” seating with a baggage compartment down the center of the cab. The “white” passengers sat on one side and the passengers “of color” sat on the other side. Many local people of different race and ethnicity worked together for the railroads, the saw mills, the lumbering operations and on the barges and ships that once plied the Tar–Pamlico River.

Another early railroad, the East Carolina Railway Company, carried lumber from Fountain to Tarboro circa 1900. From Tarboro, the lumber was dumped into the Tar River and floated to Washington to the Eureka Lumber Mill on the west end of Main Street.
In the very late 1890s and early 1900s, the Norfolk-Southern Railway Company was created when several small rail companies merged, including the Albemarle and Pantego RR, the Raleigh and Pamlico Sound Railway, whose line stretched from Washington through Greenville and Wilson to Raleigh, the Washington and Plymouth RR, and circa 1910 the Norfolk-Southern Railway Company established a rail route from Pinetown to Belhaven.

No wonder so many train stories and songs survive, and also nostalgia for “toy” trains. Even a child of today who has never seen a real train is familiar with the “Polar Express” movie shown this time of year. Christmas is a peak time for emergence of memories, both sad and happy, and the practice of traditions. The practice of tradition can have great benefit, whether the expressed traditions are family/friends-specific or universal among persons of the same faith or culture. Traditions passed on and shared help people of different generations to connect emotionally and feel more rooted and secure, and when elders share their stories and traditions with the young, the young can better understand the elders and their history. Each generation inherits traditions, then builds upon and adds new ones to meet their own needs, thus blending the old and new.
Billie-Jean E. Mallison is a member of the Historic Port of Washington Project.