Murphy Branch

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The Murphy Branch is a railroad line in western North Carolina that runs from Asheville in the east to Murphy in the west. Over the years it has been owned and operated by several companies, including the Western North Carolina Railroad, Richmond and Danville, Southern Railway, Norfolk Southern, and today the Blue Ridge Southern Railroad. The line roughly follows I-40 from Asheville to Canton and US 74 from Canton to Murphy, and it has steep grades of more than 4% in two places.

Construction happened between 1880 and 1891 with convict labor under the Western North Carolina Railroad. The Murphy Branch opened up the rugged mountains west of Asheville, helping people travel more easily and boosting business in western North Carolina.

In the 1980s, Norfolk Southern reduced freight on the line and closed the section west of Sylva. In 1988, the North Carolina Department of Transportation bought the track west of Dillsboro to preserve the corridor and granted trackage rights from Dillsboro to Andrews to the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad (GSMR), a tourist line that also handles some freight. In 1996, the state sold the Dillsboro–Andrews segment to GSMR.

In April 2014, Norfolk Southern announced the sale of the Asheville–Dillsboro section to Watco, which created the Blue Ridge Southern Railroad to operate it. The deal closed on July 26, 2014. GSMR still owns the Dillsboro–Andrews portion and operates most of it, except for the westernmost part between Hewitt and Andrews. The Andrews–Murphy segment remains owned by the state and has been out of service since 1985.

CSX abandoned its connecting line from Murphy southwest into Georgia in 1986.

Today the Murphy Branch still supports Western North Carolina’s economy. It serves the Jackson Paper plant in Sylva, and for many years carried most of the business of the Pactiv Evergreen paper mill in Canton (which closed in 2023, causing cutbacks). The line also delivers chemicals to Premier Magnesia in Waynesville for epsom-salt production, moves woodchips from T&S Hardwoods in Addie, and supplies liquefied petroleum gas to a transfer facility near Sylva in Beta.

In 2023, a railroad simulation game called Railroader was released on Steam, depicting a Sylva-to-Andrews route as a shortline railroad set in the 1940s–1950s.