Pag* 10 West Craven Highlights August 21,1986
Qre^t Ghosts of the Age of Stesm
sun Ghug Through Spencer Shops
SPENCER,N.C.
ENCER.N.C.-lt was loud, dirty, and full of hiss and steam.
Hammers clanged on steel and men shouted to be heard over the
noise.
It ran day and night, seven days a week. Almost 3,000 people
toiled in its stalls and chambers. It was a sweating, real-life
picture of industrial America at work.
This was the Spencer Shops, one of the country's largest
railroad shops for steam locomotives. Today, it provides a quiet
gathering place for retired railroaders and a real-life setting for
North Carolina's new Transportation Museum.
"If you didn’t want to get dirty or listen to noise, you didn't go
near there." declares C.E. "Pappy" Spear, 62. now mayor of
Spencer. He started work in the shops at age 17, learning to make
boilers for the engines that got overhauled there.
The shop 8 were built in 1886 and the town soon followed, both
namesakes of Samuel Spencer, the Southern Railway baron.
Their principal virtue was their location at Mile Post 334, midway
between Washington and the big rail hub at Atlanta.
Steam locomotives had to be serviced every 150 miles, and the
Spencer Shops became the Southern's largest service station.
The shops are mostly empty today. They stand silent, a hulking
ghost factory built for another time but too solid to fall down. But
life stirs in what once was the master mechanic's building,
adjacent to the highway that separates the 57 acres of shops from
the small Piedmont town.
"There's a certain flavor of the railroad in the town," says
Supervisor Michael C. Wells. "Many of the people who live here
retired from the railroad and worked at the shops."
In the museum is the Spencer Ties Room, where many of the
retirees come and swap stories ahd drink coffee. "They're proud
of their railroad heritage," says Wells.
That heritage looms over the town in the massive iron and brick
buildings that compose the shops. There is the main repair
station known simply as the Back Shop, largest of all the
structures, seven stories tall and cavernou8~S96feet by 150 feet.
Pigeons roost among its broken windows and on the
superstructure that held giant overhead cranes. The special
wooden-peg flooring helped to absorb the noise as well as the
grease and sweat of decades. Two sets of tracks run through the
middle of the building, where 75 engines a day could be serviced,
having rods greased and drawbars tested,gettingsand in their
sandboxes and oil in their cooling systems.
Close by is the great, 37-bay i‘oundhouse that has been
returned to working order this year. "It's the biggest one I've ever
seen," says W.L."Buck" Honeycutt, 61, who was 19 when he went
to work at the shops.
The sprawling grounds include the powerhouse that generated
its own steam and electricity for thel million square feet of shop
space. Other buildings include the paint shop, flue shop, ice
house , and oil house. A converted rail car now serves as a theater
for museum programs.
In the old days, there was the feared lye pit, used for cleaning
greasy metal parts. As Spear recalls, "They had this huge pit, and
people worked around there all the time. That lye was pretty
strong, and it was the end of you if you fell in."
Across the highway is a restaurant where Evelyn Krider has
tended the counter since 1943and remembers the fare and prices
of those days: "One meat, two vegetables, a drink, and dessert for
47 cents," she says.
They had an efficient system, says Mrs. Krider: "We would
reserve their seats for them and send someone over with a menu,
and they'd mark their names beside what they wanted, so that
when they got here, they had their meals waiting for them. You
dared not get their seats. They generallly liked something that
would stick to them, pintobeans and durnplings,chicken-fried
steak. No fancy vegetables like broccoli."
The' advent of diesel engines, which required less
maintenance,spelled the end of the Spencer Shops, although it
was 1960 before the shops closed. "I got sick," says Honeycutt of
the day they shut the shops. "Memories that come back to me is
how men could take steel and put it together and make an engine
out of it."
The memories come back to others, too, in the famous ballad,
"The Wreck of the Old 97." It was to Spencer that the locomotive
was speeafrig in 1903 when it failed to make a curve and plunged
into a ravine, killing the engineer and 10 others.
And, not far from the shops one October night In 1901, one of
Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show trains collided head-on with
freight engine No.75. Ninety-two horses perished, and 40 more
had to be shot. Amazingly, no people were killed, but the wreck
left markswoman Annie Oakley partially paralyzed.
Supervisor Wells hopes to bring back many of the Spencer
Shops memories. With help from townsfolk and museum
patrons, some 40 pieces of rolling stock and six engines are being
restored. They include a Baldwin No. 4 steam engineand elegant
private cars once owned by steel and tobacco magnates.
Wells also helps organize railroad excursions through the
Blue Ridge Mountains with retired conductors and open-air
coaches.
The Spencer Shops are only five minutes off Interstate 85. But
by rail, one can alight no nearer than Salisbury, several miles
away. The trains don't stop at Spencer anymore.
A Special to National Geographic News Service
by J. Barlow Herget -
■ *Bea^ne*"'TTor*'1Xf^
( and Advertisements -
Monday at Noon
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Prices Good From Aug. 23 thru Aug 30
Basket Weaving Supplies
Flat & Round Reed $4.95 per Hank
M Folk Art Paint $1.35
Apple Barrel Paint 99C
Straw Broorns-For Country
Channel Bass
Fishermen catching srr^
channel bass (red drum, puppy
drum) should be aware of the
14 inches minimum size, N.C.
Marine Fisheries officials
advise.
Because of the dry weather,
the salty portions of coastal
rivers and creeks sometimes
extend > further inland now,
and channel bass are caught in
unusual places. Also, the
officials noted, this is an
exceptional year for the
abundance of small ones.
Fishermen are also allowed
only two per person per day
that exceed 32 inches.
The minimum and maximum
size limits will be enforced
wherever Marine Fisheries law
officers encounter a violation,
the law applies anywhere the
fish are caught or found in a
boat or a ice chest.
i
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NEW BERN-CRAVEN COUNTY SCHOOLS
/'A ^ ^
LEGEND
□ First and Cast Days
of School Year
a End of 6 Weeks
l2ll End of School Month
0 Designsted Teechers
Workday
0 Teacher Holiday
No School lor Students
sJ. Whan Numbers are in
Gray
0 Vacation or Workday
0 Report Card Day
SNOW MAKE-UP
DAYS
If school Is cancelled
due to snow prior to
January 26,1967, snow
make-up days shall be:
First Day—March 11
Second Day—April 24
Third Day—April 23
Fourth Day—April 22
Fifth Day—April 21
10 Month
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