Durham Tales by Jim Wise

Author:Jim Wise
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The History Press

It was not as easy as it looked at first. No sooner was the new Durham & Clarksville road, running northeast into Virginia, completed in late 1888 than its backers leased it to the Richmond & Danville, as well. A third line, the Durham & Northern, was completed March 26, 1889, but it had a problem of its own. Its right of way terminated at the eastern edge of town, near Dillard Street, and that was a far distance from the Blackwell and Duke tobacco factories that had been built along the original tracks now controlled by the R&D, and that firm was in no mood to share with or otherwise accommodate a rival.

So, the town’s good aldermen, acting with the general welfare at heart, gave the Durham & Northern the go-ahead to lay its own track to the factories, running it right up Peabody Street, which paralleled the existing rail line on the north side. The trouble was that Peabody Street lay inside the old North Carolina Railroad right of way that the state had leased to the Richmond & Danville. Anticipating opposition, on April 9 a crew made up of townsmen went out in the dead of night and began making tracks. By the dawn’s early light, the R&D had them arrested for trespassing.

The town authorities, however, promptly dismissed the trespass charges and the Durham crew was back at work as soon as darkness fell. By the time the sun came up again, the “Moonlight Railroad” was complete all the way to the W. Duke Sons & Company factory on the western side of town. The workmen went home for a well-earned rest, and the Richmond & Danville’s hands began tearing the new tracks apart. Town police stepped in. Both sides summoned legal counsel, and while the matter awaited the pleasure of the courts, townsmen stood armed guard over the line they had drawn, so to speak, and the Durham & Northern parked freight cars all the way through town to dissuade anyone from messing with its track. The Richmond & Danville tried to lay connecting switches to move the cars out of the way, but in May a federal judge told it to leave the D&N alone. The R&D complied, but its attorneys labored on.

It had not yet been determined to legal satisfaction just who had the right to do what with Peabody Street. In 1890, a court ruled that, when the Richmond & Danville had leased the North Carolina Railroad, authority over Peabody Street reverted to the city. In 1895, the Southern Railroad bought the R&D and dissolved the company, thereby, the Southern claimed, voiding the reversion. In 1903, a federal judge agreed and so obliged the Seaboard Air Line, which had bought the Durham & Northern in 1901, to pay the Southern rent for use of the Moonlight track.

That decision only set up another contest of wills. While the city, the D&N and the R&D faced off, a third line, the Durham & Roxboro, had been completed to Ramseur Street on the east side.

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