Basic training: a short-line railroad keeps it simple with ties that bind industry over the long haul.

• Author: Maley, Frank
• Position: PICTURE THIS

In less than three hours, the blue locomotive rumbles through the sandhills and flatlands of Moore, Hoke and Cumberland counties, covering its 46-mile run between Aberdeen and Fayetteville. Rail cars follow--sometimes as many as 50--as the Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad Co. train lumbers toward its next stop.

The A & R is no behemoth like Norfolk Southern or CSX, but it and the 22 other short-line railroads in the state are crucial links in getting raw materials to manufacturers and finished goods to consumers. "People tend to regard short lines and small railroads as cute," A & R President Ed Lewis says. "We don't like to think of ourselves as cute. We're there to help move industry's goods. And we're just as important as the big guys in our own way."

For more than a century, the Aberdeen-based railroad has been helping sustain the economy in one of the poorest parts of the state. Confederate veteran John Blue started the railroad in 1892 to haul timber and turpentine from his family's pine forests. His forest-products business faded within 20 years, but the railroad lived on. His descendants still own the A & R, which began leasing the Pee Dee River Railway, a 15-mile line in South Carolina, 18 years ago.

With annual revenue well under $10 million, the A & R system is often called a short-line railroad, but the definition is as soft as the sandy soil its tracks cross. What it's not is a Class 1--a main line--which, by federal definition, is a railroad with revenue of at least $289 million last year. Virginia-based Norfolk Southern and Jacksonville, Fla.-based CSX are the only main lines...