THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 8, 1996 TAG: 9607060098
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KURT KENT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 187 lines
RIDING THE RAILBUS ``seemed like flying,'' said Sadie L. Shaw of Virginia Beach. At least it seemed like flying compared with taking the trolley, which the railbus replaced.
With their gasoline engines, railbuses did move right along.
``The speed was governed at 50 mph,'' said W.T. ``Tom'' Sawyer, another Virginia Beach resident.
But the governors may not have been tamper-proof.
``There were some sections of track near highways, though, and they kind of raced, and they were clocked there at 60 mph,'' Sawyer said. ``But that was hearsay - it was not official.''
What was official was the railbus's status as part of a rail operation, rather than a city streetcar company.
Just as on a railroad with gigantic locomotives, ``all the guys had railway watches,'' Sawyer said, ``and they made the schedule.''
The railbus top speeds were about the same as those of the light-rail cars that are being considered for a route between Virginia Beach and Norfolk. The light rail cars would hit 55 mph on the same Norfolk Southern tracks as trolleys and railbuses once used. Like the trolleys, which ran before 1935, the light-rail cars would rely on electricity provided through overhead lines.
The motormen and conductors who worked on the trolleys also ran the railbuses.
Tom Sawyer's dad, Wilson T. Sawyer, was one of those motormen. ``He worked on that line from 1910 to 1947,'' said Sawyer. Wilson Sawyer taught his son to drive the railbuses on the side tracks and the ``Y'' near 31st to 33rd streets where Pacific Avenue now runs.
``He had a comfortable chair in the motorman's compartment in the front of the car,'' Sawyer said of his father. ``At the back of his compartment was a double seat for VIPs,'' usually judges or lawyers.
The cars were known as ``Green Hornets'' for the dark green paint on their bottom half. The buff-colored tops helped ward off the summer sun.
Inside, the flooring was Armstrong linoleum. It had an embossed pattern in the aisles, but was smooth under the seats. Walls and overheads matched the cream of outside. Seats, two abreast on each side of the center aisle, were covered in green artificial leather with gold piping.
The cars were each 56 feet 7 inches long and nine feet wide. Floors stood 37 inches above the rail. Roofs were 10 feet high.
The trolleys they replaced may have lacked air-conditioning, but they did have glamour.
``They had big glass windows all around,'' said Mrs. Shaw, who lives on Norfolk Avenue in the Seatack neighborhood. With the windows down, she said, the breeze would blow in your face to cool you off.
But even more suited to summer were the earlier trolleys without walls.
Those open cars had wooden seats running their length. Running boards flanked the sides. Canvas curtains dropped down to protect passengers from rain, wind and sun.
On the railbuses, the riders were enclosed and the trip was usually quiet, Tom Sawyer said. The engine was muffled as well as governed. And the motorman would have to hold the speed down for curves.
``But when the car would get on a straight stretch and he was making time,'' Sawyer said, ``it was a little noisy - you might have to raise your voice.''
Another time it got noisy was each morning and evening.
That's when the cars carried schoolchildren to and from their classes.
``There were a lot of fights on those cars,'' Sawyer said. ``You know, the sort of things kids do when they're horsing around.''
White Beach children rode the rails from first grade through high school graduation.
The students would board to a crowd of familiar faces. Under the eyes of the conductor, things could go only so far. Rowdiness had limits.
The railbus cars would start their pupil pickups at Cape Henry and run south toward the big turn westward at Ninth Street.
Younger students got off at 17th Street and walked two blocks west and two south to Willoughby T. Cooke Elementary School.
High-schoolers stayed on all the way to Oceana school, which served both elementary and high-school pupils. That school, closed in 1954 when jets flying out of Oceana Naval Air Station made too much of a racket, stood right on the Norfolk Southern tracks on Southern Boulevard at West Lane.
Black Beach students were forced by segregation to attend different schools. Shaw, then Sadie Daughtry, attended high school in Norfolk because there was none for blacks in her city, she said.
The regular contact made passengers and crew almost like part of a very large, mobile extended family. Shaw still remembers the names of three conductors, Captain Simmons, Captain Mister and Captain House.
The passengers enjoyed hearing Mr. House call out the names of the stops, Shaw said.
``He could ring those names out, almost like a sing-song,'' she said. ``Eu-clid, then Rose-mont, then Grove-land. . . .''
Another railbus hallmark was the honk of the air horn.
The motorman would blow it as the car approached each station.
``The horn was saying, `If there's anyone standing there waiting, we will stop,' '' Shaw explained. ``If the driver saw nobody, another horn would blow to say, `We're going straight through.' ''
The conductor also had his turn at the horn.
``The conductor would go to the back of the car when they were backing up,'' Sawyer said. ``He would open up this little box with controls inside, and he would blow the air horn when the car was backing up.''
Then, when the car was ready to go forward, the conductor would blow the air horn again to signal the motorman in his train-front compartment to take control.
The motorman had another use for the horn, too.
When there was a dog on the track, Sawyer said, ``He'd blow the horn like the devil'' to scare it off. Sawyer described the railbus air horns as similar to the horns on the big diesel locomotives that ride the Norfolk-Southern tracks now.
Sawyer said that as the car approached each crossing, the motorman would blow the Morse code pattern for L, ``short-long-short-short.''
The glamour of the old transit times showed up best for some in the evening.
Each railbus had a Golden Glow headlight and a back-up light.
Watching for the faint gleam of the headlight in the night lent suspense to an evening trip. Then came the thrill of seeing the huge white light shining down the track as the railbus rounded a corner or topped a rise.
Before an evening trip, the Daughtry girls and boys would wait at their house just off the tracks for the railcar.
``At night, we would see that big light as it was coming around the curve,'' Shaw said. ``Usually, when we saw the light, we could make it almost to the station.''
Neglected during the World War II shortages of men and materials, the tracks deteriorated, increasingly causing cars to derail. Wilson Sawyer was one of the few motormen who could ``rerail'' them himself.
He carried a jack, a huge steel wrecking bar and a triangular piece of steel in a rack at the back of the motorman's compartment, his son said. When the railbus went off the track, Wilson Sawyer would jack it up, let it down carefully on the steel triangle, and shove with the wrecking bar until it sat once again on the rails.
``It was really something to see one person get that heavy car back on the track,'' Tom Sawyer said.
Virginia Beach City Council is scheduled to consider a light rail proposal at tomorrow's meeting. The Tidewater Transportation District Commission plan has already been approved by Norfolk.
If the Beach concurs, a regional planning authority is likely to give the go ahead to a more detailed study and engineering work on the rail plan. The final design could be completed by 1998, with track upgrading and other work beginning in 2001.
And history could repeat itself as early as 2003, with a rail line reopened to Beach-Norfolk commuters anxious to avoid rush hour traffic jams.
Once again, area travelers would be able to fly on the rails. MEMO: TROLLEY BIRTH TO RAILBUS DEATH
1883: The Norfolk, Virginia Beach Railroad and Improvement Co. first
ran cars over its 19-mile narrow-gauge railway between Norfolk and
Virginia Beach. A steam engine pulled the cars.
1885: The NVBRRIC opened the Princess Anne Hotel at the Beach. The
hotel succeeded in attracting riders.
1898: Narrow-gauge tracks were widened to standard gauge on the Beach
line in 1898.
1900: The NVBRRIC was absorbed by the Norfolk Southern Railroad.
1902: The Chesapeake Transit Co. began the 24 1/2-mile North Shore
Route to the beaches. The cars were powered by electricity.
1904: Norfolk Southern acquired Chesapeake Transit and joined the
Northern and Southern routes to the Beach with a 2-mile connector,
located in Norfolk. At the beach, the route went northward past Cape
Henry. The switch to electric power on the beach line cars was mostly
completed.
1907: The Princess Anne Hotel burned.
1912: Norfolk Southern opened Seaside Park Casino.
1934: The last open cars were retired from Beach service. The cars
had wooden seats running their length. Running boards flanked both
sides. Canvas curtains dropped down to protect passengers from rain,
wind and sun.
The first two railbuses, powered by gasoline, arrived in December to
start replacing the electric-powered trolleys. Railbus No. 101 was named
``The Carolinian'' and No. 102 was called ``The Sir Walter Raleigh.''
1944: Much of the track needed repair. World War II prevented regular
maintenance and made it impossible to get parts. The rickety rails led
to more-frequent derailings.
1947: The last railbus left Norfolk for Virginia Beach at 11:30 p.m.
on Nov. 8.
Compiled by Kurt Kent, with help from Joyce Whitehurst Salmons of
Virginia Beach and Peggy Haile of the Kirn Library's Sargeant Memorial
Room.
[For a related story, see page E3 of The Virginian-Pilot for this date.] ILLUSTRATION: Photo by L. TODD SPENCER
As a young girl, Sadie Shaw rode a railbus that traveled the Norfolk
Southern tracks from Virginia Beach to her Norfolk high school.
Railbus No. 103 - "The Cavalier" - (shown here, at right, at the
Park Avenue Station) arrived in Norfolk in April 1935.
FILE PHOTO
Electric-powered trolleys once traveled the streets of Norfolk. by CNB