Carolina Southern Railroad - History

History

The company in 1995 began operating two former CSX Transportation branch lines. One was a portion of the now abandoned ACL line between Florence, South Carolina and Wilmington, North Carolina, and the other was operated by the Waccamaw Coast Line from Conway, South Carolina to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Commodities carried by the railroad are coal, wood products, stone, grain, agricultural chemical, and processed food. Accessible to the line are industrial parks in Whiteville, North Carolina as well as Marion, South Carolina. The railroad connects with CSX Transportation at Mullins.

In 1985, Horry County, South Carolina purchased the CSX line from Conway to Myrtle Beach. In 1996, the county decided to sell, and Carolina Southern, which began leasing the railroad line from the county in 1995, was the only bidder. The county turned down Carolina Southern's three bids, and by 1998, the city of Myrtle Beach showed interest.

In 1987, the South Carolina Department of Transportation declared the section east of the Pine Island Bridge over the Intracoastal Waterway to be unsafe. The state spent $4.2 million to restore the 50-year-old bridge, which reopened in summer 1997. The first train crossed the bridge June 22, 2001, but Carolina Southern, still leasing from the county, had to spend $900,000 to bring the section east of the waterway up to the standards needed for regular service.

Currently, Carolina Southern Railroad is under a voluntary shutdown due to several bridges along the rail line requiring maintenance. The shutdown caused Carolina Southern to lay off nearly if not all of its employees. On May 24, 2011, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) did a bridge inspection on both the CSR and Waccamaw Coastline Railroad (the Horry County portion of rail). A total 52 out of 187 bridges were inspected. and out of those inspected, seven bridges had critical defects. CSR voluntarily ceased operation on May 26, 2012, in order to hire a certified bridge engineer in order to inspect the critical bridges and prepare a plan for repairs and based on the engineer's recommendations, CSR made the required repairs to the problem bridges and resumed operations on August 8, 2011. On August 24, 2011, the FRA conducted another bridge inspection and at that time recommended the CSR cease operations until all of the bridges were repaired.

The county later applied for a federal grant, with plans to spend $7.5 million on the county's rail line. However, the TIGER grant application failed, leaving Horry County and Carolina Southern seeking other funding methods to upgrade their tracks. In February 2012, Carolina Southern announced that they would again seek funding through a different TIGER grant level to get the most important problems fixed. The railroad sold off some of its older passenger equipment to an Iowa short line due to lack of use or need for passenger equipment. As a freight railroad, the passenger cars were strictly for show and used only occasionally for company events. The railroad has plans to re-open in the near future, possibly before the end of 2012.

On August 23, 2012, MyHorryNews reported that First Federal Bank is suing the owners of Carolina Southern Railroad because of unpaid debt of over $1 million. First Federal filed the lawsuit on August 7 against Ken Pippin, whose family runs the railroad based in Conway, South Carolina and is seeking a judgement for what the bank is owed ($958,183.47) and also has plans to repossess several locomotives all this according to court records. The entire case is stems from a 2008 loan that was provided what was then Plantation Federal Bank. First Federal Bank took over the loan when Plantation Federal was shut down on April 2012 by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Despite what the bank clams, Pippins says that the debt problems have already been dealt with as his company signed an agreement to restructure the loan before Plantation Federal went under. Pippin says that he doesn't know what their (First Federal) was, but say he knows that his company signed an agreement with them right at the time Plantation Federal was being taken over. He goes on further to say that federal banking authorities Office of the Comptroller of the Currency sent them an agreement to signed and they signed it and sent it back and then the bank was taken over, but says they got someone down there that is working on it and he is sure it will all get straightened out.

On September 29, 2012, it as announced via The Sun News that officials in Horry, Marion and Columbus, North Carolina have formed a committee to help them try to figure out what can be done to get the rail service back on track. Officials from government and business consider it critical to have the presence of rail transportation not only to the area to support current jobs, but to also facilitate expansion of existing businesses, the location of new businesses and the growth of jobs associated with either two. The rail service has been shut down for more than a year, and area leaders say they are getting increasingly nervous by its absence from the area. Carolina Southern Railroad currently owns 93 miles of track in the counties with 2 being in South Carolina and 1 in North Carolina and since August 2011 has not operated, due to structural problems on some of its bridges. Carolina Southern Railroad has spent $400,000 so far on seven bridges that have problems so severe to shut down operations, according to Jason Pippin, the railroad’s general manager, and work has been completed on three of the bridges and he estimates that the work to repair the other four unfinished four bridges would cost $1.5 million to complete the work needed.

On October 8, 2012, state and local leaders from both North and South Carolina were exploring options that would get the Carolina Southern Railroad back on track. The railroad track has been shut down for more than a year now. Even though it would take millions of dollars, officials from Horry County say that it is time to get the trains and the railroad working again, but the only problem is finding the money to fund the initiative. Jason Pippin with Carolina Southern Railroad says he is keeping his fingers crossed and hoping to get the chance to use the railroad again for business, but it will take a number of people to get the railroad going again and that includes representatives from both Carolinas as well as local leaders from Horry, Marion and Columbus Counties. Pipin says that there are a lot of people combined in those counties and they're very optimistic that they recognize the importance of having a railroad in their communities. Pippin also points out that the railroad has an economic impact with a recent study that states that there are about 800 jobs linked to the railroad, and about 4,000 jobs that are not directly impacted. Tom Horn, who is a longtime resident of Horry County, remembers the days when trains were passing through and says that there were a lot of companies that used the railroad in the past and he thinks that they could use it again and will be well worth it, he predicts. The railroad was shut down last summer when the county could not afford to pay the estimated millions of dollars that are needed for maintenance and upgrades. Horne justifies that the railroad has been around for almost 150 years and that hopefully it will be around 150 years from now. A meeting to discuss funding for the railroad and options that would put it back into operation will be held at the Loris Public Safety Building at 3 p.m.

On October 8, 2012, leaders from Horry and Marion counties in South Carolina and Columbus County in North Carolina met at the Loris Public Safety Building in Loris, South Carolina at 3:00 PM where they heard from Carolina Southern owner Ken Pippin who told them that he didn't have the money to make all the necessary improvements. The minimum amount that that would be needed to get the railroad up and running again is estimated at $1.5 million and further improvements could add up beyond $12 million. Doug Wendel, the committee's chair, said that every day that goes by, digs a little deeper, so time is of the essence. An investment in repairs could pay off, said economic experts. Dr. Henry Lowenstein, a professor with Coastal Carolina University, says that the railroad is a positive running running railroad when the infrastructure is running and that it does run profitably. Lowenstein says that Georgia Pacific had a plant that at one point that had over 460 people working there, but the plant had to shut down temporarily because of the lack of railroads. Local leaders are concerned that more businesses could scale back as the rail service is looked at as a key to attracting more manufacturing companies to the area. Ken Pippin says that there are mechanisms for funding to fix these kinds of problems and he thinks that has to be accessed and it takes the political will to do it. Pippin, with the help of Horry County, have applied for federal grants, but have been turned down by the federal government twice. Some of the committee members asked Pippin if he'd be willing to sell the rail line and Pippin told News13 that's not something he's looking to do. Pippin said that it is a family business and that they love it and it had been a very difficult time, but that they inherited a lot of the problems when we came here with the railroad. He went on further to say the they were able to cure those, and he is sure that they'll be able to cure these. Wendel said that there were parties that were interested in purchasing the line and that the state has also talked with Carolina Southern. Wendell went on to say that they (the committee) will find a way of having the Commerce Department along with Pippin together to work something out that is in Mr. Pippin's as well as the people's best interest.