(Oct. 28, 2018) – It took more than a year of discussions to make happen, but the century-old Rock Island Railroad depot at Perry, Arkansas, which was slated to be torn down, has been moved so that it can be preserved. It was an incredible joy to see workers from a house moving company be allowed to access the property in September 2018 and remove the depot so that the Perry County Historical Society can begin the process of restoring it to become a museum.
A crew from Combs Home Builders & House Movers was busy on September 26, 2018 as the former Rock Island depot at Perry was pulled from the spot where it had been sitting for 100 years. All photos by Michael Hibblen unless otherwise noted.
During the same week the depot was being moved, by chance the 2018 annual picnic of former Rock Island employees in Arkansas was held. 38 years after a federal judge ordered the bankrupt railroad shut down in 1980, employees still get together, showing the enduring friendships forged in their years of working for the Rock Island. So on Tuesday, September 25, I went to the reunion to document a few memories from those who worked in Perry.
As I write this on October 28, we’re only halfway through the process. The depot is now sitting on steel beams waiting for a foundation to be built. I’m working with the Perry County Historical & Genealogical Society to raise money for the second phase of the project. If you’d like to support the project, you can find a donation box below. The depot will still be along the same railroad tracks, just a block to the east on a piece of land being provided by the city of Perry.
The Perry depot on Thursday, September 28 after being moved to a city-owned access road behind the railroad’s property.
The effort to save the depot has garnered state and national attention, even outside of railroad and preservation circles. On the Saturday following the move, September 29, The New York Times included the Perry depot as one of seven train stations nationwide profiled in an article headlined “Grimy, Glorious, Gone. The Divergent Paths of 7 Train stations.” Times reporter Mitch Smith traveled to Perry two months earlier and toured the depot with a photographer. A month before the move. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette profiled the project on Sunday, August 26, with the story “Century-old depot in Arkansas gets green light to move.” The paper had previously reported on the depot when it was named by Preserve Arkansas to its 2018 list of the state’s 10 Most Endangered Places, then included a photo of the depot being moved in its Thursday, September 27 edition.
The four days of labor to move the wooden depot off property now owned by the Little Rock & Western Railway took place during the last week of September. The shortline, which was created after the Rock Island was shut down, wants to build a new locomotive servicing facility there.
For almost a half-century, travelers passed through the station when this stretch of the Rock Island, known as the Sunbelt Line, linked Memphis, Tennessee and Tucumcari, New Mexico, running through Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. In Amarillo, Texas, passengers could get connecting service to the west coast via another railroad. Passenger service ended in 1967, but the Perry depot continued to be used by employees for freight duties until the end of the Rock Island. It was then headquarters of the Little Rock & Western Railway for its first four years until a new office building could be built across the tracks.
One final shot of the Perry depot in its original location on the morning of September 24, 2018, before the house moving company arrived to begin the process. Thanks to photographer David Hoge who shared this and several other photos he took that week.
A Bobcat was used to move equipment and remove things around the depot like this storage locker. Photo by David Hoge
With a light mist of rain coming down on Monday, September 24, the crew from Combs Home Builders & House Movers arrived and began work. It had rained heavily in the previous days and the ground was muddy and messy. The first two days were spent getting two steal beams, which ran the length of the roughly 67 foot depot, underneath the structure. That took digging into the ground with shovels and the assistance of a Bobcat. Then pieces of wood were laid on the ground with hydraulic jacks placed between them and the building. Air was eventually added to the jacks, which raised the depot up. It looked like hard work, but crew members said it was relatively easy compared to bigger jobs they had completed. They clearly knew exactly what they were doing.
Hydraulic jacks were used to lift the depot from the ground with steel beams slid underneath.
The city had prepared the lot where the depot will eventually be placed by making the ground level and adding several layers of shale. We were advised by the group Preserve Arkansas, which has been providing guidance in the project, to wait and see what kind of foundation, if any, was underneath before deciding what kind of new foundation to construct. It turns out that the depot was simply sitting on bridge timbers when it was built in 1918. That apparently was a fairly common practice for depots at that time. The workers had to cut and pull out those now-rotted timbers as part of the process.
After cutting old bridge ties underneath the depot, a worker hands a piece of wood to another worker.
An old bridge timber that the depot had been sitting on being moved out of the way.
It was a rather strange site to see so many workers underneath the depot. They put a lot of faith in their equipment holding it up.
A key aspect of the project involves also moving the semaphore signal directly in front of the depot, which was manually controlled by the telegrapher or depot agent inside and instructed trains whether to stop or proceed. The depot certainly wouldn’t look the same without it. One of the two blades that would be vertical or horizontal is missing, but that can be replaced. Thankfully the colored lenses are still inside the signal.
Workers inside and outside the depot prepare to disconnect the controls for the semaphore signal. Photo by David Hoge
The pieces that connected the signal to the manual controls inside the depot were disconnected by the movers, but not before the blades were raised and lowered one final time in the depot’s original location. The signal was on a large concrete foundation, connected by four metal bolts. The movers used a torch to cut the bolts, and the signal has been set aside until a new concrete foundation can be poured at the new location when the depot is in position.
On Tuesday, September 25, at the reunion of former Rock Island employees in Sherwood, Arkansas, Rock Island Club President Jerry Oates invited me to speak to the group about what was happening at that same moment. I had been to the annual reunions the two previous years and was happy to share our goals of restoring the weathered building to eventually become a museum that will tell the story of the community and the railroad’s important role in it. Afterward, I recorded interviews with some of those who worked in the depot.
“Oh man, that’s fantastic,” said John Henderson who worked as a telegraph operator around this region of the country for the Rock Island. He started with the railroad in Bridgeport, Texas in 1957, then bid on a position in Brinkley, Arkansas in 1960. His job sometimes involved going to Perry to relieve longtime depot agent Joe Majors when he would take vacations.
“It was an important station as far as the railroad went because it was about halfway between Little Rock and Booneville,” Henderson said. “That’s where your decisions were made by your train dispatchers in Little Rock [on] where to meet trains.”
Perry featured several tracks that would allow one train to go into a siding so that another could pass on the main line. There was also a house track that ran behind the depot. Sidings elsewhere in the area could also be used.
I’ll have more recollections from former employees and Majors’ son further below.
A westbound passenger train approaches the Perry depot in 1960. This was taken from the cab by company photographer Ed Wojtas
The depot was a busy place for arriving and departing passengers. U.S. Mail was also handled by passenger trains that sometimes wouldn’t stop, picking up and dropping off bags of mail on the go. Abiding by Jim Crow laws of the era, the depot features two segregated waiting rooms.
Buford Suffridge, president of the Perry County Historical and Genealogical Society, has been orchestrating the effort to save depot. But it took extensive negotiations with the Little Rock & Western’s parent company, the Genesee & Wyoming, to allow the house movers to access the property. The railroad insisted that the moving company meet the qualifications of any contractor doing work on its property.
The person who handled the hardest conversations and spent hours over many months filling out forms and dealing with the railroad corporations’s legal staff was Shane Cantrell, the third generation of his family to run Combs Home Builders and House Movers. He even had to watch and then be tested on hours of railroad contractor training videos, with most of the material completely unrelated to moving the depot. He gets much of the credit for making this move happen.
Buford Suffridge (left) of the Perry County Historical and Genealogical Society and Shane Cantrell of Combs Home Builders and House Movers watch as work was being done on Wednesday, September 26. Photo by David Hoge
On Wednesday, September 26, wheels were attached to the steel beams underneath the depot and a truck pulled it from the location. The locomotive maintenance shed that was built directly behind the depot in 1984 stayed in place. The new servicing facility will be built around the steel frame of the shed, while the metal sheeting will be removed.
“It’s almost unbelievable all that we’ve been through at this point,” Suffridge said while watching the depot being moved and discussing the preservation effort, “but I believe that it’s going to happen.”
Workers just before the depot began moving. As it was pulled out, from underneath and the sides, workers released the hydraulic jacks that had lifted it up.
Thankfully the old depot didn’t crumble or turn to dust. That was the fear Suffridge and I had joked about in the year of trying to make this move happen. While we had carefully looked the depot over and heard the assessment from Little Rock & Western officials, that was still a lingering concern in the back of our minds.
With the semaphore signal only a foot or so away from the building, workers made sure the bay window and roof cleared the signal as the depot was pulled forward.
By the end of the day Wednesday, the depot was moved out and turned around in the railroad’s small lot. It was taken maybe 75 feet to a city-owned access road behind the railroad’s property where it will remain until a foundation is built at the new location. It was a slow, time consuming process that was handled masterfully by the crew. The work necessitated the removal of a gate to the property that was put back in place after the depot was moved.
In the foreground are photographers David Hoge with the Arkansas Railroad Club and Staton Breidenthal with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. After being neglected for so long, it was great to see the depot getting so much attention. On the porch in the background are employees of the Little Rock & Western at what is today the railroad’s office building. I’ve grumbled about the difficulty of getting approval from the railroad’s parent company, but the local folks were all great to work with. And even at the corporate level, it was the company just looking out for any liabilities.
By Thursday, September 27, trains had resumed running on the tracks and a locomotive was parked in front of where the depot had been. The maintenance facility, which was constructed directly behind the depot, was now exposed.
The depot now turned around and facing the opposite direction.
Keeping it near the railroad tracks will be key in maintaining the historical integrity of the building, which will be a factor considered by officials when deciding whether to name the Perry depot to the National Register of Historic Places. Achieving that would open the door for grant funding which could help pay for work to restore the depot.
Now a renewed fundraising push is being launched to raise money for the second phase of the project, which involves constructing a new foundation. Suffridge has lined up someone to do carpentry work that will need to be completed before the depot can be moved again. Some of the floor joists are rotten and the floor is sagging in some areas. Jimmy Middleton, who was instrumental in preserving the city of Perry’s old high school gymnasium, is also playing a key role in this project. You can help by making a donation in the Go Fund Me box below. I’ll share details on the current financial status of the project further down.
The roof will need to be replaced and Suffridge has someone who has volunteered to take care of that. As is noticeable in the photos, about a foot of the roof’s overhang along the back of the depot was cut off when the maintenance shed was added in 1984. The full size of the roof will be restored.
Inside the Perry Depot
Overall, the interior of the depot seems to be in pretty good shape. The fact that it was never completely abandoned is a key factor in it now being salvageable. I greatly enjoyed walking through the depot once it had been moved, thinking about the work that can be done to restore the building. It will be a lot of work, but seems doable.
The interior of what was the waiting room for white people.
The ticket window facing the white waiting room of the depot. Both ticket windows were covered by pieces of wood in later years and will be opened back up.
The walls and ceiling inside the white waiting room.
The telegrapher’s bay in the office between the two waiting rooms.
The controls for the semaphore signal along the tracks.
Cracked floor tiles inside the depot, which are likely the ones that tested positive for asbestos.
Floor tiles containing asbestos will have to be carefully removed. The presence of the carcinogen, which can be deadly for those exposed to it, required approval by the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality for the building to be moved. But removing floor tiles is relatively easy compared to other places where asbestos can be found in old buildings. An environmental assessment had been completed in 2017 by the Little Rock and Western Railway as it was pursuing plans to demolish the depot.
The separate entrance to the colored waiting room.
These shelves were inside the colored waiting room. I’m told that signal crews worked out of the Perry depot going into Oklahoma and that the shelves might have been used for their equipment.
Inside the freight area of the depot many employees wrote or etched their names on the walls, some with dates.
A memo from 2004 written by the same person, Alan Wagoner, whose name is on the wall in the previous photo. The memo was about employees having to submit all vacation requests through the corporate headquarters in Panama City, Florida.
It will likely be a couple of months before the second phase of the move can be completed, placing the depot in its new location. I’ll post an update here when we know more about when that will take place.
Memories of Perry
Buford Suffridge with the Perry County Historical and Genealogical Society grew up in Perryville, which is just over the mountain from Perry, and while watching work being done to move the depot, he recalled when it was the center of activity in the community.
“I guess my earliest memory would be seeing soldiers here during World War II. We’d be on our way to Morrilton, crossing the tracks on Highway 9, and I remember looking down here. Of course, I would have been about four at the time and I was interested in soldiers. It was something that was fascinating seeing,” Suffridge said.
He had an aunt and uncle who lived in Little Rock and would regularly take a train to Perry for the weekend, with the family picking them up at the depot, then returning them there on Sunday for the ride back. Suffridge’s father owned a sawmill and would occasionally get deliveries via the railroad.
“I remember being here a time or two with my dad. He would have freight sent up here if it was very heavy. He’d have it sent up on the train, so I remember coming over, and I just remember being in here a time or two. I don’t remember why, I can just remember being inside the building.”
It was still during the steam era for railroads and Suffridge said that even in Perryville, over the mountain a few miles away, he could hear the distinctive sound of steam locomotives working. He said the depot was constantly busy, with mail service coming in twice a day, passengers arriving and departing, and freight trains switching out cars.
“There used to be a cafe over here across the street and it was kind of a loafing place for the old men in the town, and of course they would sit and watch the activities here, watch the trains. And the telegraph office was here. If you wanted to send a telegram, this was the place to do it.”
Another person with childhood memories of the Perry depot is Danny Majors, the son of longtime depot agent Joe Majors. His family lived a couple of blocks from the depot and he told me that once he was old enough to walk, his dad would bring him to the depot. He recalls that one time a mailbag broke open after being tossed from a train and his dad had all the kids from the neighborhood come over to help pick it up.
But it could sometimes be grim work, Majors said.
“Dad would get telegrams of people dying. No telling how many he delivered, soldiers. That was really the sad part of the job. He had to notify people or send them out word.”
Majors said telephones at the time were shared party lines among multiple homes, so such news wouldn’t typically be given by phone. After people died, sometimes their bodies would be shipped by rail.
“Got bodies in and out by the Railroad Express. Not only military deaths, but also if someone died in another state,” Majors said.
Joe Majors served as the Perry Depot Agent for the last several decades of the Rock Island. Photo courtesy of his son Danny Majors.
His dad also did typing for members of the section gang who worked on the track and couldn’t read or write. “He would type letters for everybody in the world because he had the only typewriter in town.”
One highlight of his dad’s life, Majors said, was getting a call late one night and being urgently told to stop a passenger train. A mistake meant that two passenger trains were heading toward one another. Not fully dressed, Joe Majors got up and ran over to flag one of the trains to stop, his son said, helping to avoid what could have been a deadly collision.
The Perry depot in May 1965, photographed by Clifton Hull. Note the Western Union sign on the nearest corner of building and the Railway Express Agency sign near the other end.
Shortly before passenger service stopped in 1967, Danny Majors said he and all of his grade school classmates in Perry were taken by bus to the nearby town of Ola. There they boarded the Rock Island’s one car doodlebug train heading east, riding it to Perry while they still had the opportunity. It was a tiny school with only three or four people in each grade, he said.
Joe Majors worked for the Rock Island until a federal judge ordered the bankrupt railroad shut down at the request of creditors who wanted its assets liquidated. Majors then went to work for the St. Louis Southwestern Railway, also known as the Cotton Belt, in Little Rock at what had been the Rock Island’s Biddle Yard. After a few injuries and being in declining health, he eventually got a railroad disability and retired.
Perry After the Rock Island
For several years after the Rock Island shut down in 1980 there was uncertainty about the future of the railroad’s infrastructure in Arkansas. It was assumed that another Class I railroad would acquire the trackage, which had a large footprint in the state and provided a key access point to Memphis and the Mississippi River. But after years of deferred maintenance by the Rock Island, the tracks were in very bad condition and would have required a significant investment to repair. Except for a few stretches, most of the rails ended up being taken up by the mid-1980s and sold for scrap.
The Green Bay Packaging paper mill near Perry had been the Rock Island’s primary customer in the area and required continued rail service for its operations. When that began looking iffy, the company bought the tracks from Little Rock to Perry and hired several former Rock Island employees who could run trains and continue switching out cars for the mill. Bob Sandage was among them and eventually became vice-president and general manager of the newly created Little Rock & Western Railway. It was initially headquartered in the Perry depot.
The Green Bay Packaging Arkansas Kraft Division paper mill in Oppelo, Arkansas, which was a major customer for the Rock Island.
“The paper mill had hired a guy, Earl Durden. He lived in Dothan, Alabama and he’d been doing consulting work for shortline railroads and been president of a railroad,” Sandage said. “He called me, and that was in the very startup of the Little Rock and Western, and I went up there and he talked to me a little bit and he said, ‘When can you go to work,’ and I said ‘right now,’ and he said ‘come on.”
Sandage said about $1 million was spent rehabilitating the line, including a $500,000 grant from the state. The locomotive servicing facility, including a pit, was built behind the depot, while a new office building was constructed across the tracks. After that, the Perry depot was mostly used for storage. Durden’s company Rail Management Corporation owned 14 shortlines around the country until 2005 when it was sold to the Genesee and Wyoming, which today owns or has interest in 120 shortline railroads.
The adjacent city-owned lot where the depot will eventually be placed. Heavy equipment has been used to make the ground level with several layers of shale added.
The Finances to Save the Depot
We have been extremely appreciative of the many people who have found merit in our effort to save the Perry depot and donated money to the project. Our online Go Fund Me account has, as of this writing, raised $5,655. We have also had people give us checks. Anyone wishing to make a donation that way can mail a check to:
Perry County Historical Museum
P.O. Box 1128
Perryville, AR 72126
At this point we’ve raised $11,101, which goes to the Perry County Historical and Genealogical Society and the 501(c)(3) non-profit Perry County Historical Museum. The donations have come from a broad range of groups and people. If you can help, please do!
UPDATES ON THE PERRY DEPOT:
Grant Money Will Ensure Former Rock Island Depot in Perry Gets Back on the Ground (April 28, 2019) – At a time when fundraising was stagnant, we got great news as the Arkansas Economic Development Commission awarded the project nearly $10,000 to create a community meeting place and museum inside the depot. READ MORE
Preparing to Place Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas in New Location (Jan. 5, 2020) – Extensive work was done to build up a city-owned piece of land to place the Perry depot on. Record flooding threatened the depot in its temporary location and showed the ground where it would be placed needed to be higher than originally planed. READ MORE
Relocation Completed of Rock Island Depot in Arkansas, Now Fundraising Begins to Repair Roof (March 1, 2020) – In January, the house moving company returned to Perry and placed the depot in its new location. Then a block mason built a foundation underneath, with the depot now ready for renovations to begin. The next priority is repairing the roof. READ MORE
PREVIOUS ENTRIES ON THE PERRY DEPOT:
Effort to Save Former Rock Island Depot in Perry, Arkansas from Demolition (Sept. 2, 2017) – Features extensive photos I took inside the depot and details the early proposal to move it. This was before the city offered a property and at that time the idea was being floated to move the depot across the tracks to an area also owned by the Little Rock & Western Railway. READ MORE
Challenges Persist in Moving the Former Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas (March 27, 2018) – Includes the first estimate from a company on the cost of moving the depot, which was unrealistic. I also update details of a rejected request for the Little Rock & Western to donate a piece of land. READ MORE
Agreement Reached to Move and Preserve Former Rock Island Depot at Perry, Arkansas (Summer 2018) – A series of updates between June and August about ongoing developments. After extensive negotiations, we finally received paperwork from the Little Rock & Western’s parent company for the Town of Perry to acquire the depot for $10 and move it off the railroad’s property. READ MORE
I welcome any additional information, photos, stories, comments or corrections. Write to: michael@hibblenradio.com.
