THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 21, 1995 TAG: 9505200089
SECTION: SUFFOLK SUN PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: By MAC DANIEL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 213 lines
IF, BY SOME WEIRD circumstance, you should be forced to eat from a set of railroad tracks, choose the town of Ashland as your plate.
Two of the neatest, cleanest railroad tracks run, dead center, through this idyllic college town. Even the brown stones lining the tracks seem extraordinarily clean, so near-perfect that the trains seem to slow in adoration.
As well it should be. Ashland is a railroad town, born and raised along the tracks of the former Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad. And if there is a prideful core to this town of about 6,000, it is not the local college, town hall or the bevy of revitalized homes - it is the railroad station.
It was not always this way.
For years, the station lay abandoned. Later, after the railroad donated it to the town, it was used for storage by a local relief organization. CSX freight and Amtrak trains clipped by at 40 mph, and no one got on or off. The locus of Ashland's history lay dormant.
Today, things are different. After an inexpensive renovation, 15,000 people now visit the slate-roofed station each year to get brochures on the town and surrounding area. That's up from 13,500 visitors last year, thanks in part to signs that line Interstate 95, on the eastern edge of town.
``Train-o's,'' an Ashland term for train buffs (like ``winos''), sometimes spend hours by the tracks, peering through binoculars for an approaching train. A magazine for model railroad enthusiasts recently profiled Ashland as a town to emulate in miniature.
And after some aggressive lobbying, Amtrak now stops here on a limited basis, connecting Ashland with Washington, D.C., Atlantic City and the Big Apple. You can leave Ashland at 8:15 a.m., take Amtrak's train No. 86 and arrive in Boston by sundown.
Ashland, home of Randolph-Macon College, is 20 miles north of Richmond and about 6 miles from Kings Dominion.
As the Downtown Suffolk Association and the Save Our Station committee begin to raise funds to renovate the dilapidated Seaboard Train Station on North Main Street, local leaders could learn some valuable lessons from Ashland, its train station and the town's renewed sense of history.
Suffolk's Seaboard Train Station on North Main Street has a glorious history. The Orange Blossom Special left the station frequently for Miami. Fresh produce from local fields was once loaded onto freight trains bound for the nation's larger cities. The station connected Suffolk with the rest of the world.
The station was built in 1834, and rebuilt and remodeled up until 1910. The tower on its north end gave the stationmaster and a telegraph operator a bird's-eye view of oncoming trains. If steam were spotted down the tracks, the stationmaster ran down a spiral staircase and closed the gates at Main Street by hand as the telegraph operator sent a message ahead to the next station.
A concrete marker adorned with a large, black ``W'' still stands down the tracks from the station. It was used to let the train engineer know to whistle ahead.
Two waiting rooms - one for black patrons and a larger room (with a fireplace) for white patrons - were used in the station, which was made mostly of brick. Tin work on the sides of the building contains pictures of bells.
After being nearly gutted by fire in November, the station still stands. The spiral staircase leading to the tower remains virtually unharmed, and the exterior of the building is still in relatively good shape.
Owner CSX was going to raze it after the fire. Local preservationists then asked the railroad to save the building.
Rather than donate the station to Suffolk, CSX charged the Downtown Suffolk Association for the building. The saviors of the station won't say exactly how much was paid, but Bob Chisom, association director, put the amount at less than $7,500.
Down the rails, two storage sheds for the station are now trashed. One serves as temporary home for a homeless man, his Bible resting gingerly against the wood wall. And recently, someone carved the initials ``KKK'' into a charred door of the station, another reminder to the station's new owners that their mission to save the station should be placed on a fast track.
Ashland's train station is fairly plain. Its designer - W. Duncan Lee, a son of Ashland and architect of portions of the Governor's mansion and homes along Monument Avenue in Richmond - wanted it that way. Its simplicity has a lot of beauty. An architectural firm has said of the building: ``Its orderliness, form, proportion and balance, along with the beauty in its color and texture, create a picturesque edifice in the town. It is a jewel.''
Four large white columns adorn the front of the building, which has a heavily pitched slate roof.
Inside, the stationmaster's office has two separate, beveled ticket windows - one was once for black patrons, the other for white. The tile inside the station is still in good shape, and a tiny waiting room for the women (to escape the tobacco-chewing men) sits at the end of the station. The stationmaster was a smoker - there are burn marks on the original wood shelves.
In her book on the history of Ashland, author Rosanne Groat Shalf interviewed Leroy Carrington Sr., a baggage handler for the station in the 1940s. He recalled that, in Ashland, friendships were sometimes more important than segregation rules.
``There was a time,'' he recalled, ``when some whites would come over and sit with the blacks. We could sit over there (on the white side) if we wanted. They got along good. Everybody did.''
The station was built in 1923, but Ashland's railroad history goes back much further. The town was formerly called Slash Cottage and served as a summer community used by the railroad to lure overheated Richmond folks to the country.
``It was more of a marketing ploy than anything else,'' said Shalf, now a town council member.
The railroad first came through in 1836, and the town grew up as a summer resort that boasted of its mineral springs, which have since dried up.
By 1854, lots were being sold for summer homes, and people began to live here full time, on streets lit at night by water dripping on acetylene gas. By 1858, the town of Ashland was incorporated.
The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad abandoned the station in 1967. It saw little use until 1983, when the railroad dedicated it to the town. It served as a storage bin for a local relief agency for a short time until the town began to notice its jewel in the rough.
``I think that there was a general feeling in Ashland that Ashland wasn't historic - that it was an old and used-up town,'' said Shalf. ``But that changed when the town turned 125 years old. There developed this unique consciousness of what we had and what we had to lose.''
The movement took advantage of a huge influx of young couples who began buying and revitalizing old homes in town. One such couple was Shalf and her husband, who came to Ashland on what she calls ``a fluke.''
They stayed.
``I saw this as a town that didn't want to be overcome by the suburbs,'' she said. ``And my goal now is to raise people's consciousness about the community-centered nature of this town.''
When the town began thinking about renovating the train station, there was talk of making it a museum. Maybe even the town's new police station.
``Here we have this little jewel,'' said Bob Nelson, executive director of the Ashland-Hanover Chamber of Commerce. ``And what are we going to do with it?''
At that same time, after years of faltering, the local Chamber of Commerce got active. After having 40 paying members in the past, the Chamber has 450 paying members now. It was formerly an all-volunteer organization. Then they hired their first full-time director and their first paid staff.
Suddenly, the chamber's office was open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. for the first time in ages.
And in 1985, the renovations began to turn the station into the new home for the chamber.
Ashland's train station never reached the same state as Suffolk's station. The brick building has remained in relatively good shape ever since it closed. Renovations to the station were relatively inexpensive and mostly involved new wiring for the building and a new heating system. Everything else was in pretty good shape. It took less than a year to get the station ready.
At about the same time, the station got certification as a state information center under the Virginia Division of Tourism. There are only 33 such sites in the state. And although the station would have to distribute tourism brochures for areas across Virginia, its state certification allowed the town to place signs along nearby Interstate 95, advertising its railroad nature.
In addition, the town lobbied Amtrak to begin passenger service again. Now, by simply calling ahead and letting Amtrak know you want a ride, the train will stop.
Ashland is being reasonable in its approach to tourism. Instead of trying to compete with surrounding cities, Ashland markets itself as a hub city - a place where you can stay and still be within reach of Richmond, Williamsburg, Kings Dominion and Fredericksburg. The town's transient and meal tax has doubled in the last 10 years. ``It's far more than we get through our real estate tax,'' said town manager David Reynal.
Things have gone so well for the Chamber of Commerce that it has moved down the street to its own digs. Its former home in the train station is now a full-time visitors center that is nearly always welcoming someone to Ashland.
``It's virtually impossible to pull 15,000 people into this community if you don't have something to offer,'' said Nelson. ``And now, I think we have that something.'' MEMO: HOPES FOR AN immediate infusion of money to restore the former CSX
railway station, near downtown Suffolk, were at least sidetracked last
week, when the Virginia Department of Transportation did not place the
project among those to get federal funds.
The Downtown Suffolk Association and Save Our Station (SOS) had
applied for a $400,000 federal grant to help renovate the structure.
The money would have come through the Intermodal Surface Transportation
Efficiency Act - federal money administered by states.
The Transportation Department will hold two public hearings in June,
and those leading the Suffolk preservation effort hope to have a
contingent of speakers to convince the board to change its mind.
Suffolk would be required to match 20 percent of any award.
Suffolk's application reportedly ranked high among the 170-some
applications considered by the board - and, before that, by its
environmental committee.
The preservationists hope to restore the 19th century structure, on
Main Street, to public use. A variety of possibilities has been
discussed, including a visitors' center and a restaurant.
Leaders of the restoration have said all along, though, that failure
to get federal funds would not diminish the drive to save the station.
Indeed, they see its restoration as the focal point of a broader
restoration of Suffolk landmarks.
The long-hoped Barrett's Landing project in Franklin was funded. It
will transform an area along the Blackwater River into a park with
walking trails, a bandstand and waterfront, brick walkway and wharf.
Union Camp Corporation donated land for the project, which city
officials said will capitalize on ``an extremely beautiful and
historically significant site . . .'' Much of the Union Camp operation
will be visible from the park.
- Mac Daniel
ILLUSTRATION: [Cover]
A LESSON FROM ASHLAND
[Color Photo]
Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
A freight train loaded with truck trailers zooms past the Ashland
train depot.
Staff photo by MICHAEL KESTNER
Save Our Station recently held a fund-raiser to benefit the Seaboard
Train Station on North Main Street in Suffolk.
Staff photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY II
About 15,000 people a year visit the Ashland railroad station since
its renovation.
by CNB