Radford Yard

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On Nov 14, 2007 10:30 AM, Carl wrote:

>

>

> Need history of Radford Yard 1945 to present

> Need history of Hercules Powder plant  Pepper, Va


You don't ask for much, do you Carl? :-)  But I'm sure that there are
people out there with info and others on the list who will be
interested in the responses and details.

The "Hercules Powder plant" or Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAPP),
or Radford Arsenal, or just "The Arsenal" is one of those places
everyone knows about because it is "there" but a lot of details are
hidden away.  The plant was built as part of the ramp-up to WWII, on a
site that had a plentiful supply of water from the New River and
access to raw materials via both the N&W and the Virginian.

A good starting place for information is the Historic American
Buildings Project/Historic American Engineering Record (HABS/HAER)
project of the Library of Congress. The arsenal was surveyed in the
mid '80s and the report is available online. See
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/hhh.va1329


>From the report:

Building/structure dates: 1940 initial construction
Significance: Established at the onset of World War II, the Radford
unit was one of the first single-base smokeless-powder plants
authorized under the Natural Defense Program and served as a planning
model for similar installations. The New River unit was originally a
separate installation constructed in 1941 as a
bag-manufacturing-and-loading plant for smokeless and black powders.
Following the war these two units were combined into a single
installation.

There are various reports/stories about special trains run by the N&W
to ferry workers to the plant from around the area, since housing was
short and "hot bunking" was the practice in some places. Fairlawn is
the result of the boom at the arsenal, as are several neighborhoods in
Radford, Christiansburg, and Blacksburg (the cookie-cutter houses
constructed at the time have a distictive look; many have been altered
and added on to over the years but can still be identified as such).

I'll dig around at home soon through some of the special newspapers
I've collected over the years (Bicentennial Edition of the News
Messenger, some of the annual "Progress" editions of the Radford News
Journal that I contributed to, and some clips from my days long ago as
a News Journal reporter).

As to Radford Yard, someone else will have to fill in data, details,
and timetables.  I do know that at one time the N&W tie-treating plant
was located there (now pretty much covered with Radford University's
sports complex, physical plant shops, and the highway overpass fill to
reach that side of the tracks).  I also remember that the yard office
kept clerks busy on all three shifts while mining operations were
still in full swing on the North Carolina Branch and cars from
Austinville and Ivanhoe were processed through Radford.

Again, I'll poke around in my personal "archives" of stuff to see what
I can add to the mix.

Bruce in Blacksburg