LANCASTER - While the blue and yellow freight train moved slowly up the tracks - traveling to Great Falls at a speed of less than 25 mph - Joseph Hinson looked for the perfect spot.
He focused his camera lens and began to rapidly click off image after image to add to his collection of photographs and memorabilia on the Lancaster & Chester Railway route.
The sound of the camera's shutter soon was covered by a blaring horn, as the conductor let motorists know that the train was about to cross the tracks at Orr Road. As he got closer, the conductor flashed a wide smile and Hinson waved back.
"I often go to areas along the route to watch and take pictures of the trains, but I am sure some of the crews would say that they see me every day," chuckled Hinson, who even has a scanner that allows him track the location of the trains on the route.
"I know some of them (conductors) by name and others by sight," said Hinson, 31, a full-time student studying teleproduction at York Technical College. "I can honestly say that the L&C is amazingly friendly to rail fans."
His fascination for trains began when he was a small child.
"My grandmother lived in front of an old mill on 9th Street in Chester, and I remember being 9 or 10 and looking out the window as the trains rolled by," Hinson said. "My friends and I would also play games near the tracks, and every time a train would approach they would yell out, "We gotta take a break, because Joe is gonna go watch the train.'"
Hinson said it's the innocence of those times that turned him into a rail line aficionado. Though he has visited different routes in Tennessee, Arkansas and Colorado, his loyalty primarily lies with the railways in the Carolinas, particularly the L&C.
The L&C, which began in 1873 as the Cheraw and Chester Railroad, was purchased for $25,000 in 1896 by Col. Leroy Springs of Springs Industries. It continues to maintain the same 29 miles of track trains traveled back then, as well as 30.8 miles acquired in March through a lease-purchase agreement from the Norfolk Southern lines.
Hinson, who admits to being a history buff, said he began to amass information about the L&C in his early 20s after reading a book by retired Winthrop University history professor Louise Pettus. His fact-finding expedition can now be seen on his Web site, which contains a thorough history of the L&C and links to other Web pages dedicated to Carolina railways, Carolina Rails.
"It's a way for people who may not normally be friends or move in the same circles to come together to share a common interest," said Hinson, who added that he recently went to Colorado to meet a few rail fans who have been in contact with him since the site went up.
Hinson said that it is amazing that the L&C has endured, considering how much the short lines have changed in Lancaster and Chester counties over the past 100 years.
"The hurricane of 1916 wiped out the Catawba River bridge and the L&C had to use the Southern line until they could rebuild. There was also a derailment that killed several rail workers, and I think at one point Col. Springs considered selling the L&C for scrap," Hinson said. "But it's still here."
As the train inched slowly down the tracks, Hinson smiles. He knows it will be back - and so will he.
(Photographer: Andy Burriss, Joseph Hinson photographs
a Lancaster & Chester Railway train at the Old Richburg Road crossing
in Chester County.)
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Chester County targets 400 acres
for business park
Ken Elkins
(from The
Charlotte Business Journal -- 01/25/2002)
Chester County has an agreement to buy land for
a 400-acre business development aimed at
attracting high-tech companies.
If the as-yet-unnamed park were filled during the next 10 years, its businesses would employ more than 1,000 workers, representing an investment of more than $300 million, county officials say.
"It will be a first-class industrial park that will allow us to attract a wider variety of industries that are looking for a park with guarantees about what will locate in the park," says John Weir, Chester County supervisor. The development will likely exclude heavy industrial companies.
The eastern Chester County site, on S.C. Highway 99 at Darby Road, will likely be bought as soon as the next two weeks, county sources say.
At presstime, the owners of the targeted property hadn't been identified. L&C Railway owns much of the property in that section of Chester County.
The county plans to use $2 million generated from the multi-state tobacco settlement fund to install sewer lines along S.C. 99 to the site southwest of Fort Lawn, Weir says.
Chester County Council members were scheduled
to meet Thursday afternoon to vote on buying the land. Under county officials'
plans, the sewer line to the site would connect to a treatment plant in
Great Falls.
"This opens up a whole new corridor," Weir says. "We are trying to prepare for Chester County's future."
Plus Chester County needs the jobs, he says. In November, 10.5% of the county's work force was unemployed. That's South Carolina's seventh-highest jobless rate.
Weir says light industry, such as a company that makes aircraft instruments, would be a good fit for the park. "We felt the need to have a park of this caliber to attract a certain type of industry."
All told, 43 of South Carolina's 46 counties have been allotted tobacco settlement funds, mostly for sewer lines, fiber optic lines and other infrastructure investments. About $81 million of the state's settlement cash has been allocated so far. The settlement funds must be used by early 2004, under the agreement.
Copyright 2002 American City Business Journals
Inc.
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