On November 11, 1899, the first regular train of the Lawndale Railway & Industrial Company ran on newly-laid tracks from Lawndale to Shelby, North Carolina. The dreams of Major Henry Franklin Shenck (pictured) had finally been realized.


     As a pioneer of North Carolina's booming textile industry in the late nineteenth century, Schenck had come to realize that the poor roads and the isolation of his mills were the largest impediment to the growth of his company.  After waiting well over a decade for the Southern & Western Air Line to build from Shelby to Morganton to Cranberry,  Schenck finally gave up on waiting for others to build him a line. He wrote to friends about his frustration of "being stuck in the mud" and the worn-out horse teams that he was relying on to haul materials to and from the Seaboard Air Line and Southern Railway in Shelby, almost ten miles away.

     Consequently, Schenck decided to build his own railroad, a private concern that would serve only his mill in Lawndale. At the close of the 1800's, much secondhand narrow gauge equipment came on the market, as the slim-rails boom that had gripped the country since the 1870's was dying away fast. As a result, the Major was able to buy a fair number of freight cars for rock-bottom prices. Additionally, with a gauge (width) smaller than that of the connecting railroads in Shelby, his cars could not interchange and would remain on their home tracks, much to the Major's satisfaction. 

   Though the Lawndale started out as a private concern, the "dummy line" as it was nicknamed due to its diminutive size, was an immediate hit with the communities that it served.


     Within six months of beginning operations, Schenck wrote that he had "been so constantly annoyed with applications to pass over [my] little road from here to Shelby that I cannot resist the demands of the people to haul them…"


     As a result, the railroad was upgraded to common-carrier status, and the railroad became a fixture in North Carolina for over the next four decades. 

  According to company records, the Lawndale Railway was built with the assistance of a leased engine, an old Class "A" Climax, rented from the Golden Valley Lumber Company in nearby Thermal City, North Carolina. The railroad did have an option to purchase this engine, but never chose to exercise it.
    Schenck, while fond of buying used boxcars, insisted on having a new locomotive, and a new Porter 0-4-4T "Forney" style engine was purchased to serve the line.
     Number One, shown to the left, is seen here pulling an excursion on three-rail track leading into Shelby. Until 1925, the Lawndale used dual-gauge track on either the Southern, and then the Seaboard, to travel its final miles into Shelby. 

   As reliable as #1 was, she was too light to handle all of the traffic generated by the mills. In 1908, a secondhand engine, a large 2-6-0 Grant was purchased. In a 1952 interview, roadmaster Hague Metcalfe mentions that this engine came to the railroad already numbered "3", and consequently, there never was a Lawndale Number Two.


      However, Number Three, weighing in at nearly twice the weight of Number One, was nothing more than a mechanical headache, and she was ditched from the roster in 1908. Note that in the photo, she is on the ground! 

 In 1908, the Lawndale Railway invested in brand new motive power once again, settling on Number 4, a Vulcan 2-8-0 Consolidation. Number 4 (pictured here) proved so successful that Number Three was promptly removed from the property, and an identical engine, Number 5 (pictured below) was ordered. 

 After #5's arrival in 1909, Number One was sold to a dealer, and the pair of Vulcan's served the Lawndale Railway & Industrial Company continuously until the end of the railroad in 1945. The only major rebuild ever documented on either engine came in the middle of the Great Depression, when Frank Coffey, late of the Carolina & North-Western, "robbed parts off of one to keep the other one running.," eventually doing a complete rebuild on both  locomotives. 

  On April 30, 1943, the last train pulled out of Lawndale. The equipment was parked, and within two years, the Interstate Commerce Commission allowed the railroad to be abandoned. 



For nearly 45 years, the railroad was the thread that bound the tiny textile community together.