"Takin' Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren by Skip Salmon

NW Mailing List nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org
Thu Jun 17 20:18:11 EDT 2010


Last night I had the pleasure of "Takin' Twenty" with 10 of the Brethren
and Friends of the Virginian Railway. We continued the discussion about
"coal crapping or cropping". I told the Brethren a story that my Dad
told me. He lived on Hollins Road in Roanoke and the N&W Shenandoah
Division ran behind their home. It was his, and his brother Jim's job,
every day, to gather coal that one would "crop" off an N&W hopper and
bring enough home in their red wagon for the night's banking of the
"Warm Morning" heater. When my grandfather, W. B. Salmon, became a
Christian, he decided to pay the railroad back for all that coal. He
"took money to the General Office...and they kept it". Rail Historian,
Louis Newton, told me that the N&W called this account their "Conscience
Fund" and many have contributed to it.

Passed around were the May-June "NS Biz", all about employee safety and
the "NRHS News" with a great article about the anniversary of the 611.

A correction from last week: The largest yard in the US is the UP Bailey
Yard, not the "Berkley" as reported. Thanks to Robin R. Shavers for this
correction.

The Brethren asked me to have some more "Friends of the Virginian
Railway" baseball style caps made. I did and showed them last night and
several bought them. The black hats have a mesh back (for summer), sewn
on VGN yellow logo and Velcro adjustable strip for perfect fit. The
proceeds of the sale of these hats go toward the renovation of the VGN
Station in Roanoke. Contact me at gkholine at cox.net for more info.

At the N&W (and VGN) Historical Society workday at the Archives last
week, Landon and I had the opportunity to go through several boxes of
photos that were sent on consignment from "Bob's Photos" and separate
out all of the Virginian photos from the N&W. We then checked to see if
these photos were already in the Archive VGN photo section. We found
several hundred "new" VGN photos that are now part of the N&WHS system.
One was a great shot at Matoaka. Louis Newton helped us ID the spot and
recalled that once when there was a derailment near Bluefield, as road
foreman for N&W, he detoured three east-bound N&W passenger trains
around the wreck to Matoaka. The idea was to run the trains down the VGN
to Norcross and back on to the N&W. The first train's "K" trailing truck
derailed on the steep interchange track. When Louis and his crew tried
to re-track her with a re-railer, there were no spikes to be found. A
boy standing by and watching all this excitement, exclaimed "I know were
there are spikes" and left running. He returned shortly with an arm full
of VGN spikes...

The Jewel from the Past is like one in Joe Hartsel's Elgin 21 jewel
given to him by his Dad, is from September 9, 2004: "I asked if the
Virginian had any special equipment for snow removal. 'Slick' Inge
quickly replied 'Yes, shovels and brooms'. He and others remembered
several deep snows and the concensious was that the VGN 'kept the trains
rolling' all the time, even in deep snow".

I showed the Brethren a "Roanoke Times" article given to me by Louis
Newton from December 1, 1959: "Virginian Rail Worker Retires, Dies Same
Day". It was an account of the death of John W. Harrison, 67 who was a
VGN section foreman at Goodview with 49 years service who retired and
"took the west bound" on the date of the VGN-N&W merger.

I shared with the Brethren a date from George Weber's Winston-Salem NRHS
Chapter newsletter "The Rail": Under "Lasts", "June 1, 1957, Virginian
Class SB, 0-8-0 Number 251 is the last VGN steam locomotive to operate".

Robert "Little Abner" Glass, VGN Clerk who still lives near Sewells
Point, sent this story: "An airline pilot wrote that on this particular
flight he had 'hammered' his ship into the runway really hard. The
airline had a policy that required the first officer to stand at the
door while passengers exited, and give them a 'Thanks for flying our
airline'. He said that in light of this bad landing, he had a hard time
looking the passengers in the eye. Finally everyone was off the plane
except one little old lady, walking with a cane. She said 'Sir, do you
mind if I ask you a question? Why no m'am, answered the pilot'. 'Did we
land or were we shot down?'"

Time to pull the pin on this one!

Departing Now from V248,

Skip Salmon

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