Building up the history of the railroads on my layout based on actual history and railroading in South and North Carolina. Rows in Cyan are fictional.
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1852 | The Western Railroad (WRR) was chartered in 1852 to build a 43 mile line from Fayetteville northwest to the coalfields of Egypt, about seven miles beyond Sanford. |
| November 1853 | An auger boring uncovered a coal seam some 400 feet deep at the Egypt site. |
| February 14, 1855 | The Chatham Railroad (CRR) was chartered by North Carolina to build a rail line, "...between Deep River, at or near the Coalfields, Moncure, NC in the county of Chatham, and the City of Raleigh or some point on the North Carolina Railroad." |
| 1856 | Egypt Coal Mine opened. Located in Chatham County (in a section that is now part of Lee County). |
| 1863 | Line completed to Egypt (WRR) |
| 1870 | Egypt Coal Mine closed due to flooding along the Deep River. |
| 1871 | The Chatham Railroad was reorganized as the Raleigh & Augusta Air-Line Railroad (R&AAL). The line intersects with the Western Railroad at a sandy ridge northwest of Jonesboro. |
| Note: | This needs to be taken over by the DRR |
| 1875 | Reached Hamlet. |
| 1877 | The R&AAL, which was controlled by the Raleigh & Gaston Railroad Company, had reached the North Carolina-South Carolina state line. |
| 1879 | The Western Railroad and the Mt. Airy and Ore Knob Railroad (MA&OK RR) were merged into the new Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway (CF&YVR). |
| 1880 | The Camden and Cheraw Railway is formed. (a few years down the road the Palmetto run into Cheraw, SC. That is about 60 mi from Camden so seems like a good direction for the C&NW) |
| Bet. 1885 and 1887 | Between 1885 and 1887, the Palmetto Railroad, later reorganized as the Palmetto Railway, had built southward from Hamlet, North Carolina, on the Seaboard main line, to Cheraw, South Carolina. |
| 1888 | The Lugoff and Sumter Railway is formed. |
| 1889 | Egypt Coal Mine reopened |
| 1891 | The Deep River Coal Mine opened |
| 1892 | The Deep River Coal & Coke is chartered by Branstetter Aggregates. This 18" Narrow Gauge runs from the mine to a tipple to transfer coal to the DRRR (future). |
| 1894 | The Deep River Railroad is charted. This is a 30" gauge line using equipment from a mine in South America owned by Branstetter Aggregates. DRC&C is reorganized as Deep River Mining. |
| 1895 | In 1895, the Seaboard took control of the Palmetto Railway and extended the tracks to Columbia. |
| 1899 | The Cape Fear and Yadkin Valley Railway was sold to the Southern Railway where it was reorganized as the Atlantic and Yadkin Railway. The newly created Atlantic and Yadkin then sold back the southern half of its lines from Sanford, North Carolina, to Wilmington to the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad (W&R), which was later reorganized as the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. The northern half remained a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southern Railway. |
| 1900 | Lugoff whistle stop |
| April 21, 1900 | The Wilmington and Waldon Railroad merged into the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. |
| 1901 | Line extension Camden to Columbia |
| 1904 | Branstetter Aggregates merged into Lugoff and Camden Aggregates. |
| 1905 | The Egypt Coal Mine is closed. |
| 1906 | The Camden and Cheraw Railway is merged with the Lugoff and Sumter Railway as the Lugoff, Camden and Northern Railroad. |
| 1910 | The LC&N is purchased by Lugoff and Camden Aggregates. |
| 1915 | The Egypt Coal Mine is reopened by the Norfolk Southern Railroad as the Cumnock Coal Company. |
| 1921 | The Carolina Mine at Farmville, about 4 miles east of Gulf opens. |
| 1922 | The Erskine-Ramsey Coal Company bought the Cumnock Coal Mine but it closed again due to financial and production difficulties. |
| May 27, 1925 | The Coalglen mine about two miles north of the Cumnock Coal Mine was also the site of a major mining disaster |
| 1929 | The Cummnock Coal Mine closed for the last time due to flooding. |