News-Record.com

Hurry, as though you're trying to catch a train leaving the station.

A small, but informative exhibit about railroading in Greensboro will remain in place only until Dec. 15, on the second floor of the Central Public Library on North Church Street.

Created by the Greensboro chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society, the display stresses what the railroad has meant to the city.

After the first train arrived in 1856, the town began to grow. By the late 19th century, Greensboro was a city with rail lines converging from many directions. Being a rail hub led a newspaper in 1890 to nickname Greensboro the Gate City.

The exhibit also informs viewers that Greensboro, now served by the all-freight Norfolk Southern Railway, was once a multi-railroad town. There was the large Southern Railway (now Norfolk Southern) and the Cape Fear & Yadkin Valley Railroad, which reached Greensboro in 1887.

And from 1856 to the 1890s, a third railroad ran through the city - the North Carolina Railroad, which was the city's first in 1856. It ran trains from Morehead City to Charlotte, and brought about the existence of High Point (the highest point on the line) and Burlington, founded as Company Shops, where the NCRR repaired its locomotives and cars.

In the 1890s, the NCRR ceased operating a rolling railroad, and leased its tracks to Southern. The NCRR remains an active corporation, collecting rent from Norfolk Southern and looking after property along its right of way.

A bigger railroad didn't always mean better. A photograph in the display shows an embarrassing moment in the history of Southern Railway, whose double-tracked main line between Washington and Atlanta came through Greensboro.

In 1941, a faculty switch sent a Southern steam locomotive hooked to a coal tender roaring through a short side track behind the Southern Passenger Station on East Washington Street (now the Galyon Depot for trains and buses.)

As the three crew members leaped to safety, the enormous engine smashed through a retaining wall and dropped 20 feet into the station parking lot. Thousands came downtown to gawk at the wreckage.

The smaller CF&YV went from Wilmington to Mt. Airy, by way of Greensboro. In the 1890s, the line was split into two sections, with the northern portion from Sanford to Mt. Airy renamed the Atlantic & Yadkin Railway.

Southern Railway owned the A&Y, but let it operate as an independent subsidiary until 1950, when it was absorbed into the vast Southern system.

For a while in those early years, the A&Y used as its headquarters the old Ralph Gorrell house, which belonged to the family who sold the land needed for Greensboro's founding in 1808. The house stood in what's now a partially abandoned rail freight yard downtown.

The exhibit includes stationery and rules books from the old CF&YV and A&Y and a photo of its Greensboro station, which stood on the south side of the South Elm railroad crossing.

In 1899, the station was converted to a freight depot after Southern built a big new passenger station on the other side of the crossing. A&Y passenger trains began using it. The big red brick building, with Southern engraved over the entrance, still stands. The railroad, which moved to what's now the Galyon Depot in 1927, has used the old station has offices in the decades since then.

The exhibit includes a reproduction of an A&Y timetable. A morning passenger train left Mt. Airy at 8:10 and arrived Greeensboro at 11:30 with a great view of Pilot Mountain along the way. While Southern engines often pulled A&Y trains, for a time the A&Y had its own lettering on locomotives and passenger and freight cars.

The two railroads also maintained separate turntables for turning around locomotives. The display includes a photo of Southern's turntable, which was downtown near the South Elm crossing.

The A&Y's turntable occupied a spot in the triangle formed by Southern's main line (now Norfolk Southern's main line) and two sets of A&Y tracks that veer from the Southern mainline and converged at Lee Street.

When A&Y trains approached from Sanford, they used one set of tracks, which squeezed behind buildings on South Elm Street, to reach the station and its freight yard beside the South Elm cross. The station is long gone, but freight yard, now partially empty and weedy, remains. The city would like to turn it into a park.

After loading at the station or freight yard, A&Y trains backed along tracks behind the South Elm buildings and crossed Lee Street. Northbound trains then used the second set of A&Y tracks. They crossed Eugene Street, recended a hill and forked. One track went up to the hill to connect with Southern's main line. The other went under the Southern tracks. Those rails took A&Y trains by Greensboro College and beside Battleground Road and on to Mt. Airy.

The A&Y's first passenger train stop outside Greensboro was the Battleground, a community next to the battlefield where the Battle of Guilford Courthouse was fought in 1781.

From Battleground, trains went on to Summerfield and what used to be Green Pond, which changed its name to Stokesdale after the railroad's arrival.

According to Stokesdale's web site, the town is named for a Mr. Stokes, "who was either an executive of the railroad, a conductor on the train or the surveyor who surveyed the area."

The old A&Y tracks that formed the triangle with Southern main line remain in place. Turntables long ago became obsolete. Norfolk Southern engines use these tracks forming the triangle - called a wye in railroad parlance - to turn locomotives around.

The A&T tracks to Sanford remain, with Norfolk Southern running a tri-weekly freight to the town of Gulf. As for the A&Y tracks going north, they now end behind two shopping centers facing Battleground and Lawndale Drive, just beyond Fernwood Drive.

The only reason A&Y tracks remain in the northern portion of the city is to provide freight car service to Chandler Concrete Co. on Mill Street. After finishing at Chandler, the switcher proceeds north to the shopping centers and used an old wye to turn around the locomotive. The wye was vital when Sears operated a huge mail order plant on site of one of the shopping centers.

Eventually, plans call for the removal of the A&Y tracks along Battleground and rail bed becoming part of the city's greenway for hiking and biking. The A&Y rail bed from Pisgah Church Road north to beyond the Bur-Mil Club is paved and heavily used for recreation. People enjoy crossing Lake Brandt twice on former A&Y trestles.

Rail buffs who listen to railroad scanners still hear the initials A&Y spoken. Crews refer to the A&Y wye downtown and the old freight yard as the A&Y yard and the line to the cement plant as the A&Y line.

Heidi Schachtschneider Cary, a library staffer who handles exhibits, says the railroad display has gotten good reaction from viewers, many of whom say they weren't aware of the railroad's role in Greensboro's history.

"Everyone needs to see this exhibit and to know what the railroad has meant to Greensboro," she says. "I didn't know until now."

Malcolm (Tex) Miller says from his bed at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital that when someone asked him how he fell, he replied, "Down."

Despite intense pain, the man who local photographer Les Seaver-Davis calls "the grand ole dean of Greensboro photographers" has kept the sense of humor that was crucial during the 50 years he spent photographing people, not all of whom were pleasant.

Now 88, Miller has been stuck at Cone since falling and breaking his hip the day after Thanksgiving. The heeling has been slow and painful. e says it will be a spell before he leaves Room 4501 at the hospital to return his Maple Street home in the old Revolutionary Mill village.

Miller is the last of the three partners who founded and operated Martin Studios downtown from 1947 until 1992. He and the studio's namesake, the late Carol Martin, took the photos and Miller's brother-in-law, the late Clarence Tucker, worked the dark room.

The studio prided itself on versatility. Martin and Miller shot everything from the Greensboro Debutante Ball to the arrival of a new tractor-trailer truck at a local trucking terminal.

Martin, as the News & Record's first photographer starting in 1937, took early photos of what's now the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro golf tournament. He was later joined by Miller. They often shot from a platform atop the studio's "woodie" station wagon.

Their photos make for a visual history of Greensboro starting from the late 1930s until well into the 1980s, when both photographers began to slow down with age.

Nothing missed their lens, including the opening of the first McDonald's in North Carolina on Summit Avenue in the late 1950s.

After the studio closed and just before his death, Martin donated more than 350,000 negatives he and Miller had shot to the Greensboro Historical Museum.

The museum produced a Martin/Miller exhibit in 1999 that remains up. In 1999, museum archivist Stephen Catlett chose selected photos for a book, "Martin's and Miller's Greensboro." Catlett followed it with a second book of Martin and Miller photos in 2002, "Dateline Greensboro: The Piedmont and Beyond."

Miller grew up on now-vanished Silver Street, which he describes as the "tail end" of the Revolution Mill Village, where houses were mill owned. He learned photography as a boy hanging around the Proximity YMCA in the neighboring Proximity mill village.

Miller later worked as a loom fixer at Revolution, moonlighting by taking photos of sports events around Greensboro. He also photographed for the Textorian, the mill newspaper.

One day at the mill in 1944, he got a telephone tip that changed his life. The caller said First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was at the Southern Railway Station waiting to change trains.

Miller grabbed his boxy and bulky Speed Graphic camera and rushed downtown. He found Roosevelt in the station's Red Cross canteen seated between Coca-Cola crates. He doesn't remember any Secret Service agents. No reporters or other photographers were there. No one asked Miller for a press credential.

When he asked the First Lady if he could take photos, she said fire away. After Miller took solo shoots of her, Roosevelt insisted the Red Cross workers be included.

Miller immediately telephoned what's now the News & Record to ask if it was aware the First Lady had had been at the station. The answer was no, followed by yes when Miller asked if the paper would like a photo.

Miller got a credit line with the photo, but no cash. When he showed the newspaper with his name under the photo to his fellow mill workers, they wouldn't accept he took it. Mill boys didn't mingle with First Ladies.

The newspaper later called to say their full-time photographer, Carol Martin, was overwhelmed with work. They offered Miller a part-time job as Martin's assistant.

That began a 48-year association with Martin, including their newspaper years and those at Martin Studios. Miller shot ordinary people and the well known, including the slapstick comic team, "The Three Stooges, " and Bob Hope.

"I still think of Carol a lot," he says of his old sidekick, who nicknamed Miller "Tex" after hearing him talk at length about the "texture" of photo paper.

Before his tumble, Miller still attended meetings of a local association of photographers, but he hasn't taken any photos-for-pay since the studio closed.

"I got out when the time was right," he says, referring to the era of digital cameras that began not long after the studio closed.

He says he could have adjusted to digital, but he liked film cameras, especially those large Speed Graphics. They produced such remarkably clear images.

"Sometimes I look at pictures I made," he says, "and think they are so good I can't believe I made them."

John Burgart has this recollection of growing up in Greensboro during World War II.

"As a child I remember seeing barrels placed on South Elm Street filled with empty toothpaste tubes," he says in an email. "I asked my mother what was the purpose in collecting used toothpaste tubes and she replied, 'They are made of lead and we make bullets out of them.' Talk about doubled-edged lead poisoning."

Burgart's observation raises a question. Why aren't those children of World War II vintage handicaped today with lousy memories, attention deficit disorders and other disabilities that lead poisoning can cause.

Lead intake obviously hasn't lessened Burgart's memory. He's not dreaming. Toothpaste tube collecting was big in many cities during the war.

In those days, lead was not considered the evil ingredient as it is today, although even then some scientists warned of lead's possible harm to children.

One web site says with certainty the lead in toothpaste tubes mixed in with the Colgate, Pepsodent and Ipana.

Stephen Catlett, archivist at the Greensboro Historical Museum, found nothing in his files about toothpaste tube collecting in Greensboro, but he doesn't doubt Burgart's story. Many materials were collected here for recyling for the military.

Catlett found on the internet people whose recollections jive with Burgart's.

A woman in Norway, N.Y., said, "We all used to save our toothpaste tubes because they were made of lead. We used to put them into the collection that went into the trucks to be taken away."

She also remembers gathering milk weed pods - aaaaachooo. She was told the pods went into parachutes.

A person who lived in Haddonfield, N.J., during the war said, "We were told even to save empty toothpaste tubes because they were made of metal in those days."

Even mixed with lead, the toothpaste tasted better than the horse meat this same person ate during the war. It was either that or meatless suppers.

"It wasn't very good," the person writes. "It tasted like stringy pot roast."

Toward the end of the war, the need for lead forced toothpaste makers to find other materials. According to an on-line research paper, "Toothpaste - A Brief History," aluminum, paper and plastic combinations became substitutes in tubes.

It's not clear whether lead returned to tubes after the war, but eventually plastic was used to make all toothpaste tubes.

If you didn't brush your teeth during the war, you aren't out of woods.

According to a book, "A Short History of Nearly Everything," by Bill Bryson, lead was found in food cans and drinking water was stored in "lead-lined tanks." Lead was spread onto fruit as a pesticide, Bryson says.

Leaded gasoline, which was rationed during the war, remained in gas pumps for many years after the war.

As most Americans know, lead paint was common before, during and after the war. Plenty of houses remain with lead paint that could harm children if deterioration causes flaking.Campaigns to rid houses of lead paint are on-going today.

At one point during the 20th century, Bryson writes, "Hardly a product existed that didn't bring a little lead into consumers' lives."