People often humorously said that W, B, and S referred to “willing but slow.”
I asked recently if anyone had any details on the rail line that once ran between Wilmington and Southport – the Wilmington, Brunswick & Southern Railroad. I got some great responses and wanted to share them in this Back Then extra. There are some inconsistencies on the end-of-service dates but all tell a similar story about the line:
From Andrew Koeppel, author of “Wilmington Then and Now”:
“Passenger service was discontinued in 1933 and freight service stopped in 1938. In 1942, due to the World War II need for steel, the rails were removed … The decision to build the railroad was influenced by the construction of the Panama Canal that was opened in 1914 … The approximately two-hour train journey from Wilmington to Southport was one of the reasons that profitable operations could not occur. Once good roads were built, cars and trucks could travel the distance in much less time. People often humorously said that W, B, and S referred to “willing but slow.” … The word “southern” in the name referred to the fact that plans once existed to extend the railroad to Little River, S.C., but that never happened.”
From Kevin Bartlett of Wilmington:
“I have a copy of the booklet “Rails to Weeds” by Charles R. Kernan that I purchased from the Wilmington Railroad Museum. A very brief history of the line as stated by Mr. Kernan is as follows”:
“Originally chartered as the Town Creek Railroad and Lumber Company in 1907, the name was changed to the Wilmington, Brunswick and Southern Railroad (WB&S) and the railroad was completed from Bolivia to Southport in November of 1911. Traffic was suspended in 1941 and the railroad abandoned in 1943.”
Bartlett continues: “A train leaving Southport at 6:15 and arriving in Wilmington at 8:30 must have been quite slow. Mr. Kernan states in his book that during WWI, soldiers from Fort Caswell nicknamed the WB&S as the “Willing But Slow.”
From Mark Koenig of the Wilmington Railroad Museum:
From the Wilmington Morning Star (June 27, 1920): “Losing all of its strength when it was almost at its destination, the locomotive that has been pulling the passenger train on the Wilmington, Brunswick and Southern Railroad between this city and Southport for many moons stopped in the piney woods yesterday morning, causing the train to be delayed three hours in arriving at the union stations.
When at a point between Brunswick and Winnabow stations, Engineer Grantham, blowing his whistle in his usual attractive manner, pulled on the cord a little too hard and broke the whistle valve. In a few moments every ounce of steam in the boiler had escaped and having no power the engine slowed up and finally stopped. Passengers hearing the noise of the escaping steam craned their necks out of the windows to ascertain what had happened and were chagrined when they learned that no amount of fire in the locomotive could generate power enough to move the iron monsterette. After conferring over the matter the train crew decided the only thing to be done was to send back to Southport for the other locomotive belonging to this railroad so one man trudged to Winnabow and telephoned the agent at the far end of the line for help.”
Koeing adds: “A fragment of the old right-of-way lies under Navassa Road off Village Road in Leland and a short dead-end street off Old Fayetteville Road carries the name WB&S Road. The WB&S was a big deal when envisioned.
The WB&S station in Southport is long gone but stood near Moore and Rhett streets. With satellite imaging, some occasional traces of the route can still be found as it bent toward Bolivia then headed toward Navassa.
As an epilogue of sorts, rail service was re-established in the early 1950s, but this time as a feeder to Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal, just north of Southport. A joint project between the US Army Corps of Engineers and Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, this line is still in active use.”
From Steve Clemmons of Wilmington:
“The last WB&S R.R. train ran in the spring of 1943 when I was 11 and the rails were taken up in the early weeks of January 1944. I lived only about two blocks away from the tracks in the small farming community of Lanvale on highway 17, just west of what is now Waterford and Jackie’s Creek … Because the tracks were in bad condition, the top speed was only about 15 mph and it hauled mostly fishmeal from the menhadden plants in Southport to the fertilizer plants in Navassa. During the spring and early planting season, it hauled bulk potash, potassium, lime, nitrate of soda and soda ash to farm stores along the way … A lot of the large farm equipment was also shipped in.
We often caught a ride if there was an empty car down to Bishops Store for a big orange or grape NEHI drink and a moon pie. The engineer would stop the train for us to get on or off and he would sometimes let us ride in the cab, show us how it worked and let us pull the whistle lanyard, but then we had a long walk home.
The tracks and roadbed had fallen on hard times and they used untreated pine logs that would be cut from the right of way for cross ties. Some of these ties rotted out quickly. Most of us remember the old train as a real stinkpot because of the putrid fishmeal and potash odors that would precede the train if the wind was blowing our way.”
From Bill Creasy of Wrightsville Beach:
“The railroad was thirty miles long and completed in 1911 … By the time that World War II began in 1941, the Wilmington, Brunswick & Southern Railroad was struggling financially, and the War Department wanted the tracks for other more-useful steel recycling needs. In 1942, the railroad was shut down and the War Department got its steel. I remember as a boy the train (was only freight then) leaving the yards at Navassa. The little freight station is still standing at Bolivia.”
Contact Scott Nunn at scott.nunn@StarNewsOnline.com or write him care of the StarNews. Browse previous Back Then columns at www.StarNewsOnline.com/backthen