Hamlet, NC: Not too small for too long

Of all the towns I’ve visited along the Amtrak line, Hamlet, North Carolina is by far the most serious about its train stop status.

Hamlet is the only place I’ve yet encountered with a model train store on its main drag, and a Seaboard Air Line Railroad locomotive on its municipal seal. The city claims its railroad depot, which in the 1930s was visited each day by more than two dozen passenger trains, is the most photographed station in the eastern U.S.