David Pressley asked me if I wanted to ride this system in its present form as it is expanding and we all know I said "Yes" as it would be new rail mileage for me. So after we finished in Spencer at the North Carolina Transportation Museum, we headed out to Interstate 77 but Friday night traffic was bad so we took US 29 into Kannapolis where David took me to the new Amtrak station.
The Kannapolis Amtrak station, built in 2004, does not look like a train station to me. From here we drove over to the old Southern Railway Kannapolis station.
The old Southern Railway Kannapolis station built in 1935. David knew all the train schedules in his head and told me Piedmont Train 76 was due here in about ten minutes so we waited.
The old Southern Railway Kannapolis sign.
Piedmont Train 76 leaves Kannapolis behind heading to Raleigh. We tried Interstate 77 again but it was still backed up so we took a surface street over to Interstate 485, the loop around Charlotte, and went clockwise around to North Polk Street were we parked at the Lynx Light Rail station. I used the ticket machine and bought us round trip tickets. We went to the platform to set up for pictures of the Charlotte Lynx Light Rail line.
The Lynx Light Rail train arrived at the I-485/South Blvd station and we boarded the train for a ride which takes just 25 minutes and makes 15 stops. We left the station and traveled north to Sharon Road station. Next we went to Arrowood station then Archdale station followed by Tyvola station. After those stops we stopped at Woodlawn station, Scaleybark station, New Bern station, East/West Blvd station, Bland Street station and Carson Street station. We crossed Interstate 277 then saw the Charlotte Panthers NFL Stadium before our next stop at the 3rd St/Convention Center station. Following that was the Charlotte Transportation Center/Arena station, home of the NBA Charlotte Hornets. Most of the people detrained here for a game tonight. The last and final stop was at 7th Street station. We detrained here for pictures during our ten-minute layover.
Future trackage for me to come back and ride.
View of our train before we departed 7th Street station. We returned to Salisbury and stopped at Arby's for dinner then at Sheetz for Coca-Cola for me before we returned to the Econo Lodge for the night. Tomorrow, my first ride behind Norfolk & Western 4-8-4 611. I can't wait!
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