ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 29, 1996 TAG: 9604290074
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on April 30, 1996. Jarvey Volk's name was
misspelled Monday in a story about the last trip of Amtrak's shuttle bus
from Roanoke to Clifton Forge.
Amtrak's last bus to its Clifton Forge passenger station pulled out of Roanoke on Sunday, making rail travel all the harder for residents of this old railroad city.
For almost seven years, bus driver Harry Messimer hauled Roanokers to the closest Amtrak station, 40 miles north in Clifton Forge, and he ferried folk from the trains there down to Roanoke.
Now he's calling on Western Virginia politicians to persuade Amtrak to resurrect the bus service. He's planning to talk with business leaders, too.
Only a reporter showed up Sunday to take the last ride with him from the Sheraton Inn Roanoke Airport. Messimer said passengers stayed away because they would have no way to get back home from Clifton Forge after a train trip. He had been alerting regular passengers for weeks that Sunday was the last day for the bus.
R.M. and Dorothy Riggs, who caught Messimer's last Clifton Forge-to-Roanoke trip, were distraught over the loss of their driver and his bus. They've written Amtrak to complain.
They've been coming by train from Silver Spring, Md., about every month for two years to visit their Roanoke daughter and her family. They'd rather not drive, but now they figure they'll have to.
"You don't find many like him," Dorothy Riggs said, glancing from her seat at Messimer as he wheeled the big bus south on U.S. 220. "He's a real gentleman." Messimer saw them so often, he gave them his home phone number in case they ever needed his help
Ernest C. Brown, a retired industrial designer from Los Angeles, had ended a whirlwind American Orient Express railway tour of the United States and was on the bus to visit old college friends in Roanoke.
Hearing he was on the final run, he grumbled about the mixed signals that transportation planners send older people. "They tell the senior citizens when they get older, `You shouldn't be driving.' Then, when they sell their cars, they can no longer visit their friends because there's no public transportation."
Pennsylvanian Harvey Volt wondered how his wife would get down to Salem now to settle her mother's estate. She had taken the train and bus often recently as her mother's health declined, and he was joining her for the funeral. "We'll just have to drive, that's all," he said.
Amtrak canceled the bus because of low ridership and high costs, but Messimer said Amtrak could easily have boosted its customer base, kept expenses low and retained the bus.
He said he had asked Amtrak to advertise the bus service, or at least place a small sign about it at the Sheraton. "They never, ever did advertising in all these years," he said.
Many Roanokers still didn't realize they could catch a bus to Amtrak. "I met somebody yesterday who didn't even know about it," Messimer said.
He said the demise of the bus began when Amtrak changed the schedule of trains that come into Clifton Forge from Washington and Chicago three days a week. For years, he had more than four hours between trains to take passengers to Roanoke and carry others back to Clifton Forge for the next train.
Six months ago, a new schedule left Messimer only an hour between trains - not nearly long enough for him to make it back to Clifton Forge - so Amtrak added a van and driver to help him out. "Double the expense, same amount of people I've been hauling," Messimer said. It wasn't long before Amtrak decided it was too expensive. Messimer said he warned Amtrak that would happen.
A Greyhound driver for 31 years before he began the part-time Amtrak job, the 65-year-old Messimer is well-known for his running commentary of Roanoke, Botetourt and Alleghany county landmarks en route. Sunday, he pointed out the redbud that wove a pinkish-purple band through the early spring woods like a long, flowing fuchsia scarf.
"I've heard it 20, 30-some times," Dorothy Riggs said of Messimer's travelogue about Rainbow Rock at Clifton Forge and how the Jackson and Cowpasture rivers form the James, "and it's still nice. He always has some kind of happy thing to say. You just feel so secure."
Messimer doesn't.
Today, he returns the bus to his employer, Chesapeake & Northern Transportation in Chesapeake, holder of the Amtrak bus contract. Then, unless he can talk somebody into getting his bus back on the road, he'll seek charter line work.
Rolling out of Clifton Forge, he eyed a trailer he had watched workers settle onto its site for days. "I'd like to see them put that mobile home up on the bank," he said, "but I won't get to see it, will I?''
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: PAUL L. NEWBY II/Staff. Harry Messimer, a veteran busby CNBdriver at Amtrak, drove his last rider, a reporter, from Roanoke to
Clifton Forge on Sunday. color.