If you have been reading some of my essays, you will have

noticed that I grew up on Sand Hill Road, which is now called

[south] Caroline Street.  We were up the hill just south of the

old depot, on the left, one house short of the intersection with

what is now Midway Road.  I could hear every train come and

leave even when I was in bed at night.  It was the early 1950’s

when the diesels were just beginning to replace the old steam

engines, also affectionately referred to as Choo-Choos.  I was

in the first four grades of school at the old Grammar School

(including the Church Sunday School room annexes), and then

the last two years were at L.J. Bell.  I had to walk to school at

the old Grammar School, but we rode the bus to L.J. Bell. 

Each day as I walked to and from school, I almost always went

by the old depot.  I mostly associate the steam engines with

Grammar School days.  I think I saw my last operational steam

engine when I was in school in Raleigh in 1960 or 1961.

 

Now there was this fool thing I did one morning as I was

walking to school with my neighbor who lived directly across

the road from our house, Nick Lovin.  It was his father, Zeb

Lovin, our neighbor on whom we played the Halloween trick

in my “Jailhouse” essay.  Nick’s father, who I had always

thought of as a tough man, was really a fine gentleman and

was friends with my father.  However, I still do not

recommend you try that Halloween trick on him.  I think he

was also a World War II veteran, but I don’t remember anyone

talking much about that.  About everything that could be said

about War II had been said by 1952.  Nick was one year

younger than me.  So if I were in the fourth grade, this would

put him in the third.  That morning as we crossed the bridge

over Falling Creek (which was dammed at that time to form a

nice pond), we came to a long train (headed eastward) stopped

across the tracks blocking our progress.  We had three

choices: (1) Wait for the train to move, (2) Go under the train

and risk being crushed if the train started moving before we

could get out the other side, or (3) Go parallel with the train

up toward the US # 1 overpass and climb the path up the hill to

Hancock Street.  Well, choice (1) was definitely out of the

question.  Then we discussed choice (2) at some length, but we

finally concluded that even I wasn’t that stupid.  So we started

implementing choice (3).  We went as far as where the steam

engine was idling; then I crossed in front of the steam engine

no more than fifteen feet from it.  Needless to say that aroused

the wrath of the Engineer and Fireman in the steam engine. 

They blew their whistle and waived their fists at me.  I assume

they didn’t appreciate me crossing that close to their

locomotive.  Nick waited another twenty or thirty feet before

he crossed.  Then we proceeded on to school for another

uneventful day.  Evidently none of the men in the stationhouse

saw what I did as I had a couple of adult friends there, and

they never mentioned this incident.

 

Also I mentioned in my previous essays that my father worked

as a salesman for the Sunshine Biscuit Company.  He took

orders one day, and then the truck came from Charlotte the

next day to delivery the goods.  The way he made this work was

when he first got home from his route and had compiled his

orders, we would go down to the depot and physically hand the

package (of orders) to the postman onboard the mail train

headed for Charlotte.  He knew exactly when the mail trains

ran.  Of course some of us children would go with him.  I think

we children shared this equally since as many who wanted to

go could go.  The one thing that stands out to me about this

was the diner car on the “Silver Meteor” train when it

stopped.  I would stand there twenty feet from the tracks and

watch the passengers eating dinner in the diner car.  I usually

waived a half-wave (using only the fingers) to them briefly;

occasionally, a nice person would waive back to me, but most

chose to ignore me. 

 

While I lived in Rockingham, I went on two train rides.  One

was to Hamlet, when my father put his wife and five (later

there were six) children on the train in Rockingham and then

drove there to meet us.  It was about a six-mile trip and took at

most ten minutes.  The next trip was a little longer.  My

paternal grandparents from Oxford, Florida had been to visit

the family.  As they were fixing to leave, they inquired if

anyone would like to go back to Florida with them to stay a

week.  Of course I was the first to volunteer (almost

immediately), but I needed someone to go with me.  I finally

talked my sister, three years my senior, into going with me as

my grandparents wouldn’t allow me to go alone, as we would

have to ride the train back all by ourselves.  An eight-year old

boy was not quite old enough for that, but evidently an eleven-

year old girl was.  My sister was very mature for her age.  We

had to go to Hamlet to catch the train to Wildwood, Florida,

which was the closest station to Oxford at six miles south of

there.  Wildwood was a huge Seaboard rail center just like

Hamlet.  That was orange country.  The main reason for the

huge railroad complex at Wildwood was to transport oranges

and orange juice north, I would assume all the way to New

York and New England, maybe even Canada.  This must have

inspired the famous train song “The Orange Blossom Special.” 

My grandparent had orange & grapefruit trees in their yard,

plus there were orchards just about everywhere.  The only

eventful thing on this trip was on the way down, the train

starting moving very slowly out in the middle of nowhere in

Georgia.  When we inquired about the situation, we were told

that it had rained heavily there recently, and the Brakemen

were out ahead checking the tracks.

 

While at my Grandparent’s house, I noticed they had a

windmill to pump water to a high holding tank.  The high tank

provided pressure for the water.  I could tell no difference

between the water pressure there compared to Rockingham’s. 

There were many such windmills in Florida for this purpose;

but the most windmills I ever noticed were in Oklahoma while

I was in meteorology school in 1965-66.  There were never

enough consistent winds to justify these in North Carolina.   

 

I had several friends who worked at the Rockingham depot. 

One was Mr. Gibson.  He worked in the office in the storage

area on the west side of Caroline Street.  This area was mostly

used for storing bales of cotton awaiting shipment.  Part of his

second shift job was to communicate with the trains using

“Morse Code”.  The signal would be transmitted over the rails

themselves.  He had a granddaughter in my class at school.  I

remember her specifically in my fourth grade class, but I think

she was in several of my classes.  I pestered him for at least

several months to get me one of those flairs the brakemen

used to caution oncoming trains they were too close.  When a

train saw one of these flairs on the tracks, it was required to

stop and wait until the flair had burned completely.  They had

a nice red flame and lasted about ten minutes.  I think my

parents would not have appreciated this gift to me; so I wasn’t

about to tell them.  He cautioned me of the danger; so I was

careful.  I never did have a good occasion to use it until July

4th, when I used it as giant sparkler.  My siblings wondered

where I got such a nice sparkler.  I had to hide the remains

from my father as he would have known what it was had he

seen it.            

 

Also, there was the “Railroad Express Agency”  (REA).  They

were the 1950’s version of today’s United Parcel Service and

Federal Express.  They occupied the east side of the old depot,

and the ticket sales office and the waiting room were on the

west side.  They had five or six dark green trucks that looked

like a United Parcel truck today except that they had

advertising on both sides in the back.  The typical commercial

was Roger Maris (who broke Babe Ruth’s record for home

runs in a season) trying to sell you some brand of cigarette; I

think it was “Lucky Strike.”   It was cheaper to take packages

to, or pick them up from the REA station yourself, as it cost

more if they had to use their trucks.  My Grandparents often

sent us one or two bushels of citrus via REA during the

winter.  Mr. Stogner was one of the gentlemen who worked

there.  His son was one of my oldest brother’s friends from the

Rockingham High School Band.    I remember they were very

nice at REA in that they would allow kid to come in and use

their water fountains whereas many stores tried to discourage

that. 

 

They used a method of describing the wheels structures (x – y -

z) of steam engines.  The x is the number of wheels forward of

the drive wheels.  The y is the number of drive wheels or

power wheels attached to the engine to produce locomotion. 

The z is the number of wheels behind the power wheels.  These

wheel counts included both sides but not the coal car.  A

typical steam engine in our area might have been 2-6-2.  That

meant two smaller weight bearing wheels up front with no

power.  Then six bigger power wheels (three on each side) are

in the middle.  And last, there are two smaller weight bearing

wheels with no power in the rear.  For example, a 0-4-2 would

imply a fairly modest engine; whereas a 4- 8-4 or 4-10-4 would

imply a much more powerful engine.  Now the really powerful

ones had two sets of drive wheels (x – y1 - y2 - z).  For example,

a 2-6-6-2 would have two sets of drive wheels (six plus six

equals twelve) capable of climbing the Rocky Mountains, but I

don’t think Seaboard owned any of these.  Of course when they

needed more power they would hook two or more locomotives

together (in series) usually at the front of the train.  This

required two crews on steam engines, but only one crew on

diesels.   

 

There were two additional problems with steam engines.  One,

they needed to take on water frequently.  They had open-top

water towers at most major stations that a steam engine could

drive under to accept water usually with a downspout that

would reach down to the water tank on top of the boiler. 

Rockingham did not have such a tower in my memory.  There

was such a tower in the old television series “Petticoat

Junction.”  In that series, some of the pretty ladies in the town

would use this tower to take baths.  Of course that doesn’t

happen in reality since it would be much too dangerous for a

nonqualified person to be up that high.  The second problem

was the coal to fuel the fire.  The coal had to be hand shoveled

into the boiler including while the trains were in motion; plus

the coal cars had to be reloaded.  The diesels eliminated both

these problems.

 

The first railroad in the United States was the B&O (Baltimore

& Ohio) circa 1830.  The Ohio in this name is the Ohio River,

not the State.  Do you remember the B&O Railroad from your

“Monopoly” playing days?  (They were the B&O, the Reading,

the Pennsylvania & the Short Line).   The main purpose of the

B&O railroad was to compete with the Erie Canal, which was

completed in 1825 and was transporting goods from the

Midwest through New York.  The gentlemen from Baltimore

envisioned transportation from the Midwest to Baltimore, so

as to make Baltimore a large processing and exporting area

(not to mention making these Baltimore businessmen

wealthy).  Thus the B&O was created.  Steam engines were

developed in Great Briton to pump water from the coalmines;

then they used steam power to carry coal carts from deep in

the mines to ground level.  It was then a very logical step to

use steam power for surface transportation.  The first Steam

Engine used for surface transportation was invented by a

Frenchman (Nicholas Cugnot) in the eighteenth century, but

let’s not get into that.  He was imprisoned when his Steam

Engine wrecked in Paris involving injuries.  His model did

work, but it still had many problems to be solved.

 

The first Steam Engine was invented by the Greek

mathematician, “Heron” (also called “Hero”) of Alexandria,

Egypt in the first century (the same century Christ was on

earth).  Imagine how different our world would be today if the

Romans had appreciated it’s value for surface transportation. 

It was only used to open and close temple doors.  Major

improvements in steam engines are credited to James Watt

and Robert Fulton in the eighteen and early nineteenth

centuries.

 

The best train museum I have seen is located in Sacramento,

California.  They have at least fifty to sixty old locomotives on

display, mostly steam engines.  All steam engines were not the

same.  They had huge ones to climb the Rocky Mountains.  The

next best museum is in Dearborn, Michigan at the Ford

Museum.  Both of these locations also have fantastic

automobile museums; of these Dearborn is the best.  I

understand there is a good B&O museum near Baltimore, but I

haven’t visited it yet.  The North Carolina Transportation

(Railroad) museum is located in Spencer, North Carolina near

Salisbury, just a couple miles from Interstate 85.  On

weekends, they offer fifteen-minute train rides powered by an

old steam engine.  This was the site of the old repair shop for

Southern Railroads called “Spencer Shops.”  Last but not least

is the Railroad Museum in Hamlet.  They have some great

photographs and memorabilia well worth the visit; also they

have some really exceptionally nice people who will talk with

you about railroading for as long as you are willing to listen.  I

might also add that if you are ever at Pike’s Peak in Colorado, I

recommend the clog train ride to the top and back.  The view

at the top is magnificent, but all that takes second place to the

train ride itself.  It was diesel when I was there about three

years ago, but the narrator mentioned that they used steam

engines there until the mid-sixties.