You may not believe this but the site of the current BB&T Stadium used to house the old Piedmont & Northern Passenger and Freight Terminals.  If you were living in Charlotte back in the early 2000’s, you may have noticed the old Chesapeake Paper warehouse and some concrete surfaces that resembled a station platform.  Well by the time that the stadium was conceived and built, the railroad tracks had been taken up and the old station had been razed.  I found this old photo of the old station:

Mint Street Terminal of the Piedmont & Northern Railway Station 1945. Photo from the S. David Carriker Collection

You can probably see the Federal Courthouse (which is still there and is famous for several federal cases involving Jim Bakker of the old “PTL” scandal and the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)

This is what the area looks like now:

The site of the Mint Street Terminal of the Piedmont & Northern Railway 2015. Photo taken by the author.

While looking for some information about the old railroad, which also had stations at Thrift, Belmont, the old Lakewood Park and a yard at Pinoca I found the following two sites, if you are into railroad history I can recommend both of these:

http://wvncrails.weebly.com/piedmont–northernyesterday-and-today.html by Dan Robie.  He also talks about other railroads in North Carolina and West Virginia but has done his research into a topic that a lot of people don’t know about.

http://www.pwrr.org/nstation/charlotte.html.  This website for the Piedmont and Western Railroad Club also has some good information on not only the P & N, but the Southern Railroad and Seaboard Airline Railroad which also had terminals here in Charlotte.

Happy Reading!