Maher & Needles

[NW Mailing List]

Possibly that special train ran over the WM from Hagerstown, Maryland to
Baltimore, or over the B&O from Shenandoah Junction, WV and the original
B&O line to Baltimore.

Jim K.

On an unrelated note, here is a description of the N&W shops in Roanoke,
taken from the 1940 WPA Guide to Virginia:

The NORFOLK AND WESTERN SHOPS (open), Norfolk St. E. of Randolph St.,
including several vast brick buildings and numerous smaller sheds, all
blackened by smoke, spread over a 145-acre tract in the center of the city.
Beneath the lofty roof of one immense building, the mottled gray and red
shell of a new locomotive may hang in the easy clutches of a giant overhead
crane, while deafening blows contribute to its completion. At another end
of this shop, a powerful locomotive, new or reconstructed, may straddle a
pit, as workmen paint its gleaming flanks. Machines are everywhere-snarling
lathes, saws that eat into steel as though it were butter, casting molds,
and welding tools that send off showers of sparks. Shouts rise above the
clanging din in the ENGINE-ERECTING SHOP to make way for a gigantic new
engine part suspended from a traveling crane overhead. In the PAINT SHOP
rows of wheelless new coaches or freight cars receive protective coats of
orange paint. Among the buildings are a blacksmith shop, machine shop,
boiler shop, foundry, planing mill, car-erecting shop, lumber yards,
storehouses, lumber kiln, and a 22-Stall engine house.

These main repair shops of the Norfolk and Western Railway have a
production capacity of 4 locomotives per month and 20 freight cars per day.
With the rest of the railroad's local facilities, they constitute Roanoke's
chief industry, employing about 6,000 workers at an annual pay roll of
$9,350,000. The shops, acquired by the railroad in 1883, were started two
years earlier as the Roanoke Machine Works and have been enlarged several
times.

For the link to this page, see:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/VAGuide/frame.html


On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 5:01 PM, NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> On Thu, Jan 29, 2015 at 11:18 AM,
> ​Abram
>  wrote:
>
> I have two questions.
>>
>> (1) How did they get Mr. Needled from a 4PM funeral service in Roanoke
>> to an 11AM burial in Baltimore? That's a rather tight schedule to do by
>> train (and most caskets traveled by rail in those days.) Did he move by
>> "motor transport"?
>>
>
> ​From a section of the follow-up article on Wednesday, October 28, 1936 in
> the Roanoke Times:
>
> "Last night the body was placed on Mr. Needles' private car attached to a
> special train and taken to Baltimore, Md., where he was born in 1867. Today
> after final commitment services he will be laid to rest in Greenmount
> cemetery."
>
> So he got special treatment right up to the end.
>
> (2) Where was Mr. Maher's home, 1134 Commerce St NW, Roanoke, located?
>> Commerce St is now called "2nd Street" (by some, at least, but not by us
>> purists.) A check of Mapquest shows that the northern portion of old
>> Commerce St may now be known as "Gainsboro Road" and places this address
>> just south of Orange Avenue. BingMaps, however, places the address near the
>> corner of Madison Avenue. The two locations are better than 500 feet apart.
>> So... Where was his home located, and what happened to it?
>>
>
> ​Someone more familiar with historic Roanoke will have to locate that
> address.
>
> Bruce in Blacksburg
> ​
>
>
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-- 
JK
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