THE MEMPHIS BUFF VOLUME 34, ISSUE 7
NATIONAL RAILWAY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
OCTOBER 2007
I REMEMBER THE MAIL TERMINAL HOUSTON COUNTY BRIDGE AMTRAK HONEYMOON
Memphis Chapter Officers President – David Chase
dchase@memphisredbirds.com
Vice President – Bruce Smedley National Director – Bill Strong
williambstrong@bellsouth.net
Secretary – Oliver Doughtie
doughtio@bellsouth.net
Treasurer – Thomas Doherty
TRDoherty@aol.com
Librarian – Mike Pendergrass Publication Editor – Tom Parker
tscottparker@gmail.com
September Meeting The September meeting of the Memphis Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society was held in conjunction with the West Tennessee Historical Society. The West Tennessee Historical Society is the umbrella heritage organization for the Western Grand Division of Tennessee. The meeting was held in the Wunderlich Auditorium at Memphis University School. The program was a Powerpoint presentation, “The History of the Memphis and Charleston Railroad “ by Bill Strong. There was a question and answer session after the presentation and Bill fielded a number of questions from the members of the West Tennesse Historical Society. After a short intermission (with refershments), the Society conducted their regular business.
October Meeting October's meeting will be held on Monday, October 8. 2007 at 7:00 P.M., at the White Station Branch of the Memphis and Shelby County Libraries. October's program will be “Turbines and Duplexes: The End of Steam”, by Bruce Smedley.
Cover Photo:IC SD40-2 6126 Southbound out of Markham Yard at Homewood, IL. Undated photo by Tom Parker
2008 Dues As you may be aware from the NRHS Extra, dues for 2008 will be collected directly by NRHS Headquarters. As I understand it they will also collect the local dues and forward it to the local chapter. Your local dues includes the electronic (email) version of The Buff; If you receive your copy via regular mail (hard copy) there is an additional fee. National Dues will be increasing but our local dues structure remains the same. Dues Structure
National
Primary Member
$33.00
$15.00
Family Member (each) $ 5.00
$ 0.00
Hardcopy The Buff
$12.00
$ 0.00
Local Chapter
Your new membership card will be sent by National with your renewal statement. If you are a local chapter only member you will receive a renewal statement from me in November. I will be out of town for most of October but if you have any problems with your statement please call me (901)754-1674.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY PADUCAH SHOP Eighty years ago, on September 1, 1927, the Illinois Central Shops at Paducah, KY, were dedicated by Charles H. Markham, president of the Illinois Central Railroad. Construction began in 1925 on the 110 acre site which was origianlly the site of the Chesapeake, Ohio and Southwestern Shops, which were built in 1884. The Illinois Central took over the CO & SW Railroad in 1896.
IC 4-6-4 2499, REBUILT FROM IC 2-8-4 7038 BY PADUCAH SHOP (T.PARKER COLLECTION)
The shop was the main locomotive shop for the Illinois Central. In the 1950's it transitioned from steam to diesel. The shop was spun off by the Illinois Central in 1986 and became VMV. In 2002 VMV went bankrupt and limped along for several years and was eventually bought by National Railway and Equipment. The VMV name was retained. More next month. FARMRAIL GP10 8267 ORIGINALLY SP GP9 3522, REBUILT BY PADUCAH SHOP. (T. PARKER PHOTO)
I REMEMBER . . . . THE MAIL TERMINAL By Tom Parker
In the early sixties you couldn’t help to notice a steady stream of United States Post Office trucks turning into the driveway just west of Central Station and going to a facility at the far end of the Central Station complex. The trucks back up to a loading dock while directly overhead, a platform is lined with railroad mail cars. Both floors are a beehive of activity. Trains of mail carts pulled by small tractors scurry back and forth, in and out and up and down ramps. Mailbags slide down a spiral chute from the second floor to the first, while other mailbags ride a conveyor belt from the first floor to the second. Mail handlers are loading and unloading vehicles on both floors, checking the tags on the mailbags and dispatching them to their proper destination.
Supervisor off the clerk’s extra board. The Mail Supervisor’s job went to work at 4:30 in the morning. The first duty of the day was to analyze the manpower requirements of the day, seeing which mail handlers had come to work, checking on the volume of expected mail, and calling in additional mail handlers if needed. During the Christmas rush, college students would often be used during their holiday break. The rest of the day was spent overseeing the mail handlers and keeping track of the mail handled through both the terminal and the station. Even as I made my first day at the Mail Terminal, its days were numbered. The post office was diverting the mail from trains to trucks and airplanes. Within a relatively few years, the Mail Terminal would be closed and mail would no longer ride the rails. Gee, I wonder of Fred Smith ever worked at the Mail Terminal at Christmas time? Maybe that’s where he got the idea………….
This facility was known merely as the “Mail Terminal” on the railroad, although I’m sure it had a more formal name. For over fifty years, a large part of Memphis’ bulk mail was handled through this facility, handled in and out of Memphis on trains of the Illinois Central, the Frisco and Rock Island. In addition to the volume handled “across the dock”, a large amount of bulk mail was handled directly from train to train either by switching a whole carload from one train to another, or by physically unloading mail from one car onto a cart and reloading it into another car on another train. Anyone who has observed the activity at an airport would immediately recognize the same activity at Central Station. Carts loaded mail, baggage and express as well as empty carts are strategically spotted in anticipation of the arrival of trains. Additionally, carloads of mail, mostly catalogs and magazines, are being shuttled around by switch engines, to and from the Mail Terminal, and between tracks in the station. I made my first day with the Illinois Central in 1962 at the Mail Terminal. I broke in with my older brother, Mike, who was working as a Mail
Photo from Mike Condren's Web Site
Three mail cars sit at the platform of the Mail Terminal at Central Station. This view is looking southwest towards Broadway. The Terminal was located next to the south end of Track 10
The Houston County Railroad Bridge by Tom Parker On April, 14, 1861, upon the completion of a bridge over the Tennessee River at Danville, TN, passenger train service was inaugurated between Bowling Green, Ky and Memphis TN.1 The bridge was subsequently replaced in 1931 and in 1938, the Kentucky Dam project began, which necessitated realignment of infrastructure up and down the Tennessee River. Among those was the realignment of the L&N's tracks over the river at Danville, TN.2
Tennessee River and then again turned northeast over the bridge, the new track turned northward about two miles west of the river and then curved to the bridge on the north side of Bass Bay. In addition to the realignment, the bridge and roadbed had to be elevated. In the photo below, the old roadbed can be seen running from the present bridge abutment to the southern edge of Bass Bay. The bridge was used until 1985, when the line was abandoned. A year later, the tracks were taken up.3
Where the original track headed in a northeastern direction along what is now the southern shore of Bass Bay, turned northward along the western bank of the
1 Montgomery County Historical Society Website http://mchsociety.org/trainstation/history.html 2 http://www.explorekentuckylake.com/explorations/houstoncobrid ge.htm
(LEFT)Composite of aerial photos from Mapmart.com by T Parker (ABOVE) 1998 Terraserver Photo 3 Ibid.
coal, and general merchandise. It had three open floors, so regardless of the height of the river, they could transfer the merchandise. Freight elevators were used to lift and lower the freight between the floors. 5
explorekentuckylake.com photo
Shortly after the bridge was abandoned, the main span, which was a vertical lift span, was used to replace a similar span across the Tennessee River at Bridgeport, AL, which had been damaged by several collisions, its control system having suffered a lightening strike and whose mechanism was worn out. The span was floated by barge upriver to Bridgeport. The remaining spans were left in place.4
explorekentuckylake.com photo
The building was in operation for over 20 years until 1941, when Kentucky Lake was created by TVA and flooded the Danville area and the transfer elevator. TVA decided to leave the transfer elevator there as a navigational marker on Kentucky Lake.6 Sometime prior to January 30, 2007, the elevator was demolished, presumably by the TVA for safety reasons. 7 With the destruction of the elevator, no physical evidence of Danville, TN remains.
Terraserver Photo
In the aerial photo above, there is a structure in the lake about a three quarters of a mile south of the bridge. These are the remains of an old elevator built by the L&N Railroad in 1918. Its primary purpose was for the transfer of freight between railroad and river and vice-versa. The freight consisted mostly of peanuts, mussel shells, grain, 4 Ibid. Email from J. H. Sullivan
5 Benton County “Tribune� by Nell Morisette, http://www.tngenweb.org/benton/bentonhistory.html 6 http://www.explorekentuckylake.com/explorations/kylakebuildin g.htm 7 Google Earth Community posting by Frank Clark 1/30/07
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is Part Four of a five part series describing a newly wed couple's 8000 mile honeymoon via Amtrak. The full series can be found at http://www.streetsblog.org/2007/08/20/transit-orientedamerica-part-1-eight-thousand-miles
Transit-Oriented America, Part 4: The Trains
The train's name, evocative of the Lake Erie coastline, is a bit of a misnomer. You travel along the lake at night, so you never really see it (at least I never have and I've taken this train quite a few times to Cleveland). But can see something with majestic views that more than makes up for it. The wide and mighty Hudson, which the train hugs all the way to Albany.
This is Part 4 of a five-part series on U.S. rail travel. (Parts 1, 2 and 3.)
View of ship traffic on the Hudson from The Lake Shore Limited
Susan Donavan, boarding Metro-North train #737 on July 11, beginning an 8000 mile journey at Grand Central Terminal
I always find it a little amazing that a handful of times a day, one can descend into Penn Station -- the place where you go to catch the 6:13 to Babylon or the 7:37 to Upper Montclair – and from the same platforms catch a train with beds and a dining car that will take you to Chicago, or Miami or Atlanta. In this case, we forsook that little pleasure for the much greater pleasure of departing for a transcontinental honeymoon from the grandeur of Grand Central Terminal, where we ran into a friend getting his shoes shined who took our picture and good naturedly warned us about what married life was like. After the departure, we transferred at Croton-Harmon to the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago. This is a train that ought to be used more for business travel than it is. If you can afford to leave New York in the late afternoon, this train gets you into Chicago at a quarter to 10, refreshed, well fed and relaxed, in time for your morning meeting or power lunch. Yes, I suppose it needs a better on-time rating to be used more by business travelers, but it is not uncommon for planes to run late as well. Our train arrived at 10:28, 43minutes late.
After spending time in Chicago we caught the Empire Builder for a three-day, two-night trip to Seattle. Pulling through Chicagoland's suburbs, I noticed a number of shipping warehouses with spur tracks going into them that were buried and weedy, while trucks in large parking lots had taken over rail marshalling yards. The freight railroads stock was on the rise for years before Warren Buffet started buying (look up BNI, UNP, CSX or NSC for some examples), and these warehouses indicate that they have plenty of room for continued growth if shippers continue to switch to fuel efficient freight rail. An hour and a half later, we were in Milwaukee, which seemed like a city we would have liked. After Milwaukee we rumbled into Minnesota, stopping at St. Paul and passing the Mississippi what seemed like four or five times. Then it was a long night and day roll through the northern prairie and big sky country of Montana before we got to the Rockies. To answer Ianqui's question from the other day, yes, the trains generally seemed filled to capacity, although people would get on and off at intermediate stops to create an ever-changing dynamic. The Empire Builder was the most crowded, and it would have been impossible to book this one but we lucked out because someone canceled. Here's the scene at Whitefish, Mont., where we
stopped at 10 pm.
After the Cascades took us to Portland, we switched to the West Coast's long-distance train, the Coast Starlight, for two runs: An overnight trip to Oakland, and what was to have been a daytime trip from San Jose to Los Angeles. This train had the worst on-time performance of our trip, but it had the coolest lounge. Actually, it is called the Parlor Car, to distinguish it from the lounge car next door. With wood and glass paneling and plush swivel seats and benches, this lives up to its old-timey sounding name. The parlor car is where we had our second wine-and-cheese tasting. (The first had been on the Empire Builder.) Downstairs,there was even an unused movie theater. Here's a photo of the Coast Starlight rounding a sharp bend as we approached the Bay Area.
The Empire Builder stops in Whitefish, Montana The Empire Builder came to its final stop, Seattle, at 9:42 a.m., 43 minutes ahead of schedule.
The Coast Starlight rounds a bend in Northern California
Amtrak's Cascade arrives in Portland After our visit there we boarded the Pacific Northwest's version of Acela: the Cascades. It's a sleekly designed train imported from Europe that makes medium-distance runs between Vancouver, B.C., and southern Oregon. This is a train that is trying as much as possible to be an airplane. They have television screens that show your relative position over the land you're traveling, which they sometimes show on a flight, and a looooong safety video that goes into way too much detail for a train. By the end of it, you're waiting for them to say: In the event of a water landing, your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device. But the food car has a counter where you can sit and a hip and modern ambiance.
We pulled into Oakland four hours late and hopped the BART at Lake Merrit to San Francisco. After our time there, rather than go back on the BART again, we we rode the MUNI light rail (it was packed with baseball fans hoping to see Barry Bonds hit his 755th home run) to CalTrain for a ride south along the San Francisco peninsula to San Jose. CalTrain is a double-decker commuter train that has an incomparable feature that encourages intermodal, non-oilguzzling transportation: The bike car. The bottom level has a large open space where you bring your bike in and
tie it to racks on the wall. You sit upstairs. I'll write it again because it is such a pleasure to type: bike car. Only in California. At San Jose, we caught the second of the two Coast Starlights, and it was running even later. The morning we were to head to Los Angeles, a woman from Amtrak called to say that our train was running 12 hours late. It had gotten stuck behind a freight train in the Cascades mountains and that train had broken down. As she no doubt prepared for me to fly into an apoplectic rage, I just said, "Great! Give us a sleeper!" Actually, we had already been in touch with Julie, Amtrak's ever-chipper automated agent, who told us about the lateness. (When traveling on Amtrak, you have to maintain constant contact with Julie, who always has up-to-date information and has the potential to reduce your wait time dramatically.) I was actually excited because the lateness gave us 12 more hours in San Francisco, time to sleep in, and saved us money because we were able to cancel a hotel room. A little while after arriving in L.A. we departed on the Sunset Limited (the train that Pete Sessions tried to eliminate while we were on it), for the longest train of our trip -- a 48-hour ride to New Orleans. We took a lot of photographs on that train because there were plenty of sights that illustrate humanity's impact on the environment. Texas is so huge it took us 24 hours to cross it. Vast portions of the east side of the state were flooded when we passed, but thankfully this didn't stop the train. We went through Houston and on to New Orleans. People along this route seemed especially friendly. I can't shake the image of a whole crew of workers in some kind of big open warehouse stopping what they were doing and waving at the train. We pulled into New Orleans six hours late, but we didn't care much because we were just excited to be there. After our time in the Big Easy, we rode our last train home: The Crescent. You see a lot of kudzu on that route.In Washington, the Crescent picks up an electric engine for the relatively speedy home stretch along the Northeast Corridor.
In Washington, an electric locomotive prepares to pull the Crescent to New York
As we neared home, we passed into the old Northeast. The densely built-up cities in this part of the country are obsolete -- relics of a past and much different economy that didn't allow people to have the amount of private space and separation that people demand today. Future growth will happen in low-density communities, especially in the Sunbelt. At least, that is the message or implication of a long line of pundits. Joel Garreau. Joel Kotkin. David Brooks. Robert Bruegmann. But if those guys are correct, why the evident difficulty selling those subdivisions we saw? And why are skyscrapers rising in downtown Philadelphia?
Skyscrapers under construction in downtown Philadelphia, as seen from Amtrak's Crescent The series will wrap-up tomorrow with a handy summary in chart form.
CABOOSE
A rare sight these days, an active caboose. This photo was taken by member J. J. Trzcinski in Yuma, Arizona on August 16, 2007.
Meeting Schedule October 8, 2007 November 12 , 2007 Meetings are the 2nd Monday of each month in the White Station Branch Library from 7-9 pm. 5094 Poplar Avenue Memphis, TN (in front of Clark Tower)
Contact the Editor Tom Parker 3012 Wood Thrush Drive Memphis, TN 38134 tscottparker@gmail.com
THE MEMPHIS BUFF welcomes contributions for publication. Copyrighted materials must contain the source. Original documents and photos are preferred for clarity. Enclose a SASE for the return of your materials. Articles sent via the Internet should be in Microsoft Word format. Photos should be JPEG files @ 72 dpi and at least 800x600 size. Consideration for a cover photo would require a much higher resolution. THE MEMPHIS BUFF is a not-for-profit publication for the Memphis Chapter of the NRHS.