Icing Platform Re: Supply Car - Shaffers Crossing

Tue Apr 28 12:47:40 EDT 2020

Abram, Thanks for all this additional Roanoke Terminal nomenclature and description of operations. My vague memory tells me you addressed this earlier on the list . . . but why was the icing platform still standing in 1967 (maybe later) as shown in the eBay photo with T-6s that got this string started.    Much obliged.   John Garner, Newport VA

From: NW Mailing List [mailto:nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org] 
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2020 8:27 PM
To: N&W Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: Icing Platform Re: Supply Car - Shaffers Crossing

Comrade Bruno von Harpermann wants coordinates for the said photo. 

Try Lat 37.27928, Lon -79.9747 for where the camera was located.  Compass heading of somewhere around 28 to 35 degrees. 

That photo was taken from the largest structure at the hump.  It was a two storey brick building with a full basement.  Jim Blackstock and my father called it the **Scale Office* but I think most of us trainmen just called it the **Hump Building.**  

This building was put there during the 1942-43 rebuilding of the hump, along with new brick buildings for three retarder towers, a new building for the Car Department forces located about 500 feet west of the tunnels, the new crew office and locker room (called **the Call Office**  by the locals,) and new yard offices 15th St and Park St.  As I recall from the date in the foundation, it seems that the new yard office was constructed at 16th St in 1949, and at that time DO telegraph office was moved from 12th St to the new 16th St. 

So I, too, shall call it the building in question Scale Office.  Downstairs was the balance beam of the big mechanical track scale on the north hump lead.  The scale for the south hump lead was directly south of the Scale Office, and on the south side of the south hump lead.  The upstairs floor of the Scale Office, in my time I should stress, housed the clerical forces, the Shaffers Crossing Yard Master in the southwest corner, and DO Telegraph Office on the north side of the building.  DO had been relocated to this location from 16th St Yard Office, shortly before I hired in 1964.  Also shortly before I hired, the Shaffers Crossing Yard Master had been relocated from the North Hump Shanty to the upstairs of the Scale Office, southwest corner of the second floor. 

The administrative office for Roanoke Terminals was located in a big, two storey brick office on the southeast corner of 12th St and Jackson Ave.  On the first floor of that building were the General Yardmaster, the Road Foreman of Engines, and the Company Doctor.  On the upstairs floor of that building were the Terminal Superintendent and his staff and the Supervisor of Bridges and Buildings.  Earlier on, the first floor of the 12th St building had also housed DO Telegraph Office (for Train Orders and Train Registering purposes for eastward trains) and the **Chief Caller.**  Back then, only one man called crews and his name was Gene Carroll (sp?)  One of the N&W Magazines had a very nice article about Mr. Carroll, complete with a photo taken in this building, done some time in the 1940s.  

I am attaching a scan from S. Kip Farrington's 1946 work, Railroading from the Rear End.  The photo (obviously an N&W photo) shows the new Scale House shortly after it was constructed.  It is the large building sitting immediately north (left) of the two hump leads.  The little brick building immediately beyond the Scale Office, and partially obscured by it, was an insulated ice house for supplying cabooses with ice. The one storey building between the two Classification Yard ladders is the Hump Signal Maintainer's Shop. 

And, in the attached photo, please note the street at right of image.  That little street is now called Westport Ave.  That is the remaining stump of the road which, in olden times, crossed the railroad at this point and gave rise to the name **Shaffers Crossing.**  Shaffer was probably the farmer who owned the land in the area.  If you project a line down the middle of that street, across the railroad, and over to Salem Ave, you will know where Shaffers Crossing was.  But remember, the main line at that time was in what is now the MIDDLE of the yard.  If you want coordinates for the grade crossing at Shaffers Crossing, I would put my money on Lat 37.27921  Lon -79.97649.  That should be good within a hundred feet.   

Immediately east of those coordinates is visible on the satellite imagery a very small dirt crossing over the Eastward and Westward Running Tracks, which were the main tracks in years of yore.  That area is called **the Coke Rack.**  Immediately east of that little crossing, on the south side of the Running Tracks, was a crib constructed of old bridge timbers.  I would guess 10 feet X 16 feet, and about 7 feet high.  Coke would be clamshelled out of a gondola into that rack, and the shop forces would come up and get it as needed.  It would be taken to the Round House Back Shop and to the Shop Track, for use by the blacksmiths.  Those two places also made their own acetylene gas using Calcium Carbide, but that is enough stories for one day. 

BTW, I last set foot on the ground at Shaffers Crossing 41 years ago this month.  I worked in and out of Roanoke for 15 years.  It was fun while it lasted.  But I kinda got bored and moved on to something bigger and faster, where they were running a hundred trains a day on the main line, and there was not even time for a tiny little nap !  I got my baptism of fire at Wilmington, Philadelphia, Chester, Enola, Harrisburg, and a bunch of other places between Washbington and Buffalo, and between New York and Pittsburgh.  Would I go back and work a job out of Shaffers Crossing again?  You betcha.  In a heartbeat.  Maybe Mr. Blackstock can get me called for First 95 tonight, and I can go to Bristol ... ? 

-- abram burnett 

Asst. Burgermeiser in the Turnip Patch 

Walton Wye, Va. 

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