Rural Hall (Milepost CF 29.9)
Rural Hall is a community in north Forsyth County. The earliest settler apparently was Ludwig Bitting, former Hessian soldier in General Nathanael Greene's army who liked the area when passing through and returned after the Revolution to settle. His descendants still live in the county. Rural Hall developed after the CF&YV erected a station here in 1887. It is at an altitude of 1,002 feet.
In 1943, the town was a water stop and had a phone and day train order office for the A&Y. The yard and local tracks had a capacity of 61 cars. Train 61 would come to call at 11:10AM daily except Sunday. Train 60 eastbound would pull in around 10:30 AM. It had furniture and lumber industries. It was also a junction with the Southern Railway's branch to North Wilkesboro and Winston-Salem.
Here is an aerial photo of Rural Hall from 1958 (obtained from the North Carolina State Library Photographic Archives). Click on the thumbnail to see the full size image. There is a lot to see in this photo: the station; an RS unit switching on the former A&Y (now Southern) tracks (up towards Mount Airy and down and right towards Greensboro); a cut of cars with a hopper, two pulpwood racks and some boxcars on the tracks heading towards Winston-Salem and Wilkesboro (lefthand side heading down and up respectively); the Philco Appliance warehouse below the station; what looks like a Southern States building (the photo as opposed to the e-image shows the SS on the building side); and numerous other interesting buildings/industries. I only hope I can find similar photos of the other towns on the A&Y!!
Rural Hall now is the operational center of the Yadkin Valley Railway and many of the YV locomotives can be found idling there when not working. I only caught a glimpse of them from the road at night my first visit.. I got lucky on my return in September and caught what must be most or all of the existing roster idling on a Sunday morning. I will be developing a YV section of this website to display those photos. Below I include only shots of the original station, it's brick replacement, and some shots of the yard. If you have pre-1960 photos, I would be very much interested in obtaining a copy for research or for display on this website!
The photo to the left is the old station at Rural Hall in the 50's. The photo on the right shows the old station in 1999 after it had been moved a hundred yards or so from it's original site. It is now used as the headquarters of a construction company and a local newspaper.
Here is a shot of the new brick station, which now serves the Yadkin Valley Railway.
Here's two shots of the yard at Rural Hall. The one on the left is facing north towards Mount Airy, 29.9 miles away (note the milepost). The image on the right is facing south towards Greensboro:
