Thanks for helping the city of Pickens celebrate our 150th anniversary! Have fun learning about our history!
The Easley-Pickens line was chartered on Dec. 24, 1890 by the South Carolina General Assembly after two failed attempts to build a railroad through Pickens from Easley. The line connected with the Atlanta and Charlotte Air Line Railroad (later the Southern Railway) and was completed in 1898.
On the railroad’s first run in 1898, the Pickens Railroad suffered a serious derailment that was caused by a local group of boys that had placed spikes on the rails, in their words, “to see what would happen.” No one was seriously injured, but the incident caused the fledgling company a serious financial setback, leaving it to operate in the red until 1905. In its early years, it was nicknamed the “Pickens Doodle” because the train would run backward to Easley and forward to Pickens, which “looked like a doodlebug,” according to area residents. The Pickens Railroad at the time did not have turning facilities until the line built two wye sections of track at each end of the line years later. Passenger service was discontinued in 1928 as better roads were built in the region.
The Southern Railway briefly acquired control of the Pickens Railroad around 1910. In the 1920s, Singer Manufacturing located a sewing machine cabinet plant on the Pickens Railroad, and the line was purchased outright in 1939 by Singer. In 1927, the Appalachian Lumber Company built a network of logging lines in the upper portion of Pickens County. By 1939, it too was acquired by Singer and organized under the Poinsett Lumber and Manufacturing Company. In 1963, Poinsett Company sold the Pickens Railroad to James F. Jones of N.C. for about $50,000. Jones built a new engine house and a car shop for rebuilding and renovating railroad cars. Jones sold in 1973 to National Railway Utilization Company (NRUC), which expanded the car shop to build new freight cars which were sold nationally. By 1980, the boxcar industry declined due to new laws and deregulation.
The CLC-Chattahoochee Locomotive Corp. bought the railroad in the early 1990’s which renamed the railroad Pickens Railway Company, according to the Federal Register, May 1, 1996. On April 2, 2013, Pickens Railway pulled the last train to Easley because of lack of business. The last train ended an era of more than 100 years of running to Easley.
The cities of Pickens and Easley in Pickens County, SC are now official owners of the Pickens Railroad or “Pickens Doodle”. The former deteriorating 8.5 mile railroad between Pickens and Easley has now been removed and replaced with a multi-use paved trail. The T. Grady Welborn sits on the abandoned tracks at the site of the old Pickens Railroad. This locomotive was the railway’s first diesel train and began running on the Pickens line in 1947.