"Taking Twenty" with the Virginian Brethren

[NW Mailing List]

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



=============