>From Railspot:
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From: "MIKE MURRAY" <mdmurray@f...>
To: "1-Railspot" <railspot@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Sun, 30 Dec 2001 11:12:54 -0600
Subject: RS: Fort Worth & Denver train station
Message-ID: <001401c19155$417ddda0$5add3040@o...>
http://www.trnonline.com/stories/12302001/regional_news/28849.shtml
Sun, December 30, 2001
Electra's beloved white elephant Town retains sentimental memories of old
Fort Worth & Denver train station
Hanaba Munn Noack, Times Record News
ELECTRA - A white elephant of a railroad depot, the old Fort Worth &
Denver station in Electra hasn't aged gracefully.
Disguised in white asbestos shingles and bordering on the nondescript,
the old wood frame building bears the indignity of now being a depot for
garage sale junk - leftovers from sales that raised money for the Boy
Scouts, the last guardians of the site. A dreary chain link fence borders
the premises.
The garage sales were the last spark of life in the building's Scout
era - a phase that seems to be in a twilight stage, unless Electra Scouts
and the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe Railroad reach an agreement on the
scouts' depot lease.
The building sits close to downtown Electra and next to the railroad
tracks that bisect Electra east-west. Burlington Northern owns the land.
Not much else is clear.
But even a white elephant sometimes has admirers.
In Electra, the depot holds sentimental memories both for the scouting
set and for older people who remember when the station was the place to
board the Zephyr, the shiny silver passenger train that connected Electra
to places like Fort Worth and Denver and points beyond. In wartime, the
departures were especially poignant.
"Many a soldier kissed their sweethearts and mothers goodbye, and they
didn't come back," Wanda McClure said.
"When the train pulled out - the old Zephyr - my mother fainted," Don
Givens said.
Jerry Neff's wartime journey started at the bus station, but when he
came back from the Philippines he arrived by train. His family didn't
know he was arriving.
"I was so damn excited, I got off on the wrong side and had to wait
until the train pulled away," Neff said.
Someone he knew gave him a ride home.
"These mesquites sure did look pretty to me," Neff said.
The same sort of down-home appeal seems to keep the old depot close to
the hearts of many Electra residents - not that they wouldn't like to see
a facelift to renew the building's looks.
The white is too much like "ordinary vanilla" to suit Aulga Robb.
"I think they should have left it like it was - deep red," she said.
Nowadays, the boards peeking out above a few sagging shingles are
weathered gray, far removed on the color spectrum from traditional depot
red.
Charles Baird's memory confirms Robb's recollections.
"It was a maroon color," he said.
Baird's father, Ned Baird, was station agent. Electra was the last
assignment of his 54 years with the railroad - a career that ended in
1970.
"The Fort Worth & Denver closed that station down when he retired,"
Baird said.
Baird's memories go back to 1948 - the year his father took the job in
Electra. He recalls that the station used to be larger - "twice the size"
it is now.
For Dink Robb, now in his 90s, railroad memories go back to an even
older building - a smaller structure that gave way to the present
building as Electra boomed and burst at all its seams.
But one of his most humorous tales is about the "newer" building - a
story of an ingenious theft that left a hole in the floor of the raised
warehouse end of the depot.
The local Catholic priest served two churches, Robb said.
"It came time for the sacramental wine to come in," he said.
The wine stayed at the depot until the priest came by.
"He came in and picked up this keg, and it was empty," Robb said.
"Some guy had come along with a brace and bit and drilled a hole in the
floor and into the barrel."
The next time the wine arrived, the freight handler set the keg on a
steel plate and even took the extra precaution of moving it every night
until the priest came by, Robb said.
On another occasion, the station temporarily lost its track-side bay
window.
"We had a loose (railroad) car come through there," Robb said. "Took
it all off."
Robb also knows the story of what happened to the "Electra" sign - or
signs - that identified the station. He was an unwitting party to the
unfortunate theft.
"A guy came in here one time and borrowed one of my ladders," Robb
said. "I didn't know ... I thought he might have been a Fort Worth &
Denver boy."
Robb doesn't presume to know the details of the ownership transfer of
the building to the scouts.
"It does not belong to the Northwest Texas Council," said Gene Haning,
district executive for the Scouts.
Haning tried to investigate the issue more than a year ago but came to
no real conclusion.
"My understanding at the time was that the railroad had taken it
back," he said.
Electra Scouts would like to turn the old building into a Scout
museum, said Electra Cubmaster Charlotte Gooch.
"It would be preserving history," she said.
Scouts have enough man and boy power to handle the project - just not
enough money, she said.
But Gooch - who said she didn't know much about the lease - said she
understood the Scouts no longer have a claim to the building.
"As long as the Scouts occupied the building, ... they could use it,"
she said. "If they weren't occupying it, it went back to the city."
Jannis Hayers, Electra Main Street director, has copies of a May 2000
inquiry about depot ownership from her husband, Paul Hayers, city
attorney, to Burlington Northern and a prompt response from Burlington
Northern to the inquiry - a promise to look into the situation. The city
has received no information since then from Burlington Northern, Jannis
Hayers said.
Joseph Faust, regional public affairs director for Burlington
Northern-Santa Fe Railroad, said the Scouts' lease is being renegotiated.
"Right now, the lease agreement has expired," he said.
Faust had no other information about the situation.
Sometimes, old depots become too expensive for lessees to maintain,
Faust said.
"A lot of times we have to go back in and repossess," he said.
Faust didn't say what the Burlington Northern does to white elephants.
Regional Reporter Hanaba Munn Noack can be reached at (940) 763-7554
or (800) 627-1646, Ext. 554, or with e-mail at hanaba@c...
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