Rob Neufeld

Special to the Citizen Times

The main train station in Asheville, built circa 1905, was this white stucco palace on Depot Street across from the Glen Rock Hotel. It survived the Flood of 1916; and was razed after the final run of the Greensboro-to-Asheville “Carolina Special” on Dec. 5, 1968. From Asheville, passenger service also went to New York, Cincinnati, and Murphy. The building’s architect was Frank Milburn, who designed ornate depots in Charlotte, Knoxville, Salisbury, and other cities, notes Jim Cox in his book, “Rails across Dixie.” The “Asheville Special” made its last passenger run out of the Biltmore station on Aug. 8, 1975, according to Tom Murray in his book, “Southern Railway.” Waiting at this station, Thomas Wolfe wrote in “Of Time and the River,” Eugene Gant watched a train approach, feeling “an empty hollowness of fear, delight, and sorrow.” From the “sensual terror ... all things before, around, about the boy came to instant life. ... It was his train and it had come to take him to the strange and secret heart of the great North.”

-- Rob Neufeld