"Taking Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Thu Jul 2 08:22:53 EDT 2009


Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with seven of the Brethren
and Friends of the Virginian Railway. A lot of the talk was about the
tremendous TV coverage of the Jackson death versus time for McMahon,
Malden, Farah and Mays. Rufus Wingfield stated that he was going to call
into Larry King and ask "if we knew that the Lord was coming back to earth
tomorrow, would CNN have time to cover it?"

We did discuss some VGN stuff. Landon Gregory, the nearest thing to an
"expert" on VGN telegraphs that we have, gave us some definitions. (Landon
did retire as Chief Dispatcher, Virginia Division from NS). The telegraph
was called "on the wire" versus the telephone as "INF". Landon said that
when he tapped "INF" on his telegraph key, the dispatcher would know that
he was weak on taking code and to call him on the "INF" or intra-office
phone. Landon said that at the time of the merger, the VGN telegraph was
used mostly for the morning reports by seasoned operators, and most of the
train orders and other operations were handled on the "INF". N&W phased the
telegraph out slowly on the VGN. Landon recalled that famous VGN operator
Clyde Weatherly at JK Tower, "used the 'key on the wire' until the early
60s". He recalled the very time when the VGN operators were told that the
telegraph was to be phased out. He and other operators were instructed to
report to Carolina Junction to hear it from operator Wilbur Pierce. He said
when he got there, Wilbur was typing a message "off the wire" on a manual
typewriter, talking on the phone to the Chief Dispatcher about train
orders, and talking to the other operators, all at the same
time...Multi-Multi-Tasking.

Ruf and Wis Sowder told us about how station agents got a commission from
the Railway Express business at their assigned location. This was quite a
nice income for them. Landon remembered that he filled in some on vacations
and saw a need to learn the complex paperwork required to get the
commission. He was "glad to hear that an agent was going on vacation and I
am to 'fill in'".

I passed around the August 2009 "TRAINS" magazine. The one item that caught
the Brethren's eye was about the Buckingham Branch Railroad "filing for
permission to take over operation of Norfolk Southern's Keysville Line from
Northern Carolina & Virginia Railroad; the ex-Southern Railway line
stretches 57 miles from Keysville to Clarksville, VA"....Virginian territory!

Also shown was a snippet from Monday's "Roanoke Times" from the "100 years
ago today" item: "A force of workmen commenced work this morning on the
Virginian depot here in Salem, which will be erected just opposite the
passenger station of the N&W". This was the first VGN station in Salem. The
second was constructed about 500 yards west of the first, near Union Street
in August of 1924 "when business was booming and Salem needed a larger
freight depot", Ruf Wingfield stated.

I asked the Brethren if the VGN had a central power house in Roanoke that
provided steam for the Roundhouse, Yard Office, Freight House and Passenger
Station. Ruf remembered that each building had its own boiler, fired with
coal. He recalled that a "trucker" (VGN term for laborer) would start
firing these early in the morning about 5 AM. He and Raymond remembered one
particular trucker, Mr. Walker, who fired the boilers and got off about
1PM. He was the fellow that really liked peanut butter and once in the
Freight Station when a restaurant case (4 one gallon jars) of peanut butter
was damaged, he stated "I've never had all the peanut butter I want to eat
at one time". He proceeded to open one of the gallon jars, and "scoop as
much as he could get into his hand and tried to eat it. It got stuck in his
throat and when he ran to the water bucket, the water just came back out.
He was finally rescued and after that 'he didn't care much for peanut butter'".

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon



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