(sweet music) - [Jason] Downtown Belmont offers a lot to those who find their way onto Main Street.

- [John] Belmont is the place that I think everybody wants to be.

- [Jason] This former textile town bustles with shops, bars, and restaurants like Sammy's.

- [John] Sammy's is Belmont's version of Cheers, right?

Everybody knows your name.

- [Jason] Owner John Bailey says downtown Belmont is experiencing a renaissance.

- It's very walkable and I think that's a great thing and I think that's one of the things that makes people want to come here.

- [Jason] However, this seemingly perfect little downtown has some connectivity and parking issues.

Just over a mile away sits Belmont Abbey College and it's 1500 students.

The issue?

A major interstate, I-85, effectively divides downtown from the school.

- It was a limiting factor for students trying to get back and forth to town and for the town to get back and forth to the college other than automobile.

- [Jason] The town is seeking a better way to connect the college.

- Belmont Trolley was an idea that was born about eight years ago.

Really the problem we were trying to solve was how to better link Belmont Abbey College to downtown Belmont.

- [Jason] And the group's solution, utilize a one and a half mile section of tracks, once part of the Piedmont and Northern Railroad, a railroad that once connected Charlotte to Mount Holly, Belmont and Gastonia.

Rob Presley is president of Belmont Trolley.

- And knowing that there was a historic rail line that started in downtown and ran right by the college, the natural thought was how do we utilize that line?

- [Jason] The nonprofit group identified three things to make it all come together.

- We were gonna need a track, we were gonna need trolley cars and we ultimately were gonna need a facility to house the trolley cars in.

We knew that North Carolina Department of Transportation owned the rail line that ran between downtown and Belmont Abbey.

So we approached North Carolina Department of Transportation and they thought it was a wonderful idea and a wonderful use of that section of rail line.

- [Jason] The next item on the list, they needed a trolley.

So they approached the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission and Charlotte Trolley who owned Car 85 and Car 1.

Number 85 is part of Charlotte's transportation history.

It was the last street car to operate in the Queen City and was retired when buses took over the routes.

Decades later, volunteers restored and operated these two cars in Charlotte South End before being displaced by the Blue Line Light Rail.

With both Charlotte cars out of service, Belmont Trolley offered to give them a home, but the Historic Landmarks Commission initially declined, so Belmont Trolley had to go shopping.

- We ended up raising the money and acquiring a vintage trolley car and it was put on a tractor trailer and with much fanfare, driven into downtown Belmont from Canada.

- [Jason] Now the proud owner of Car 16, Belmont Trolley then got an unexpected call from Charlotte Mecklenburg Historic Landmarks Commission after their own plans for Car 85 and Car 1 stalled.

- [Rob] Now Belmont has not only one car but three cars.

- [Jason] The third part of the project, they needed a place to keep their small fleet.

- We're gonna be building a facility in downtown Belmont that would be designed to look like an old train station in a small town.

- [Jason] Just like the modern street cars and light rail now operating in Charlotte, the cars at Belmont trolley need electricity.

The old Piedmont and Northern Railroad used electric locomotives, but the P&N overhead power lines they used are long gone.

They would need another power solution, a solution developed by engineering students in this lab at UNC Charlotte.

- Who knew that UNCC had an engineering school dedicated to clean energy for trains?

- [Jason] Since around 2012, researchers and students have been developing hardware and various systems to make railroads cleaner for the environment.

What the team developed might surprise you.

- What we're doing here is called wireless power transfer.

- [Jason] In some ways it's very similar to charging your phone, just on a much larger scale.

- Very similar technology that was invented by Nicola Tesla 120 years ago, but now we're using it for transportation so we can charge electric vehicle, we can charge trolleys and even the locomotive train.

- This will help to reduce the amount of carbon emissions that end up adversely affecting our climate, but it also trains our students in how to be prepared for the next generation of technologies.

- [Jason] The research at UNC Charlotte is paying off.

- [Tiefu] We are, right now, the first in the US that applies wireless power transfer technology in a train application.

- Most of the wireless power transfer systems operate about 70% efficiency, whereas our team have been able to develop a system that is over 92% efficient in the transfer of that power from the transmitter to the receiver.

And that is where the engineering and the research comes into play in order to create a better product for the future.

- [Jason] As part of the partnership between Belmont Trolley and UNC Charlotte, the researchers and students built this prototype power car.

- That power car is a tandem car that hooks to each one of the trolleys and has lithium ion batteries that then send electricity currents to the motors in the trolley cars.

- [Jason] Beyond the advancements in technology, projects like this one also come with intangible rewards.

- [Robert] It really is exciting because the students, the passion and the energy and the creativity that they bring to a project is just fantastic.

- In the future, we could come back to Belmont, years from now, see this thing completely running altogether and be like, "Hey, I was a part of that."

- [Jason] Back in Belmont, the trolleys wait like stabled horses, eager to get back to work.

The folks at Belmont Trolley still have to raise around $2 million to complete the project, but they all believe in the mission.

- You'll see a better access for the students at Belmont Abbey.

It'll be a big draw.

We'll have a lot of people coming into town who normally wouldn't have been, and so obviously it'll be a big boon to all Belmont businesses.

- [Rob] Think the community as a whole will be amazed at the benefits that this endeavor will bring to the community.

- [Jason] For "Carolina Impact", I'm Jason Terzis reporting.