Railroads of Meridian

9 MORE CHANGES

123 9 MORE CHANGES • Private Varnish Fades Two alternative modes of transportation appeared during the postwar period. Expansions of America’s highway and airway systems would soon sweep away the centurylong monopoly of rail travel, resulting in a steady decline in passenger train service. Additional financial underpinning for such trains was removed with the cessation of mail-hauling contracts as well as railway post office (RPO) service by the nation’s postal department. As the number of daily trains decreased steadily during the 1950s, the cavernous waiting room at Meridian’s 1906 Union Station fell silent for hours on end. Indeed, the beginning of the end of the city’s passenger train era was the 1960 destruction of the old station. A smaller replacement was rebuilt from one of its single-story wings, while passenger sheds were removed from boarding platforms, leaving a strange, denuded atmosphere suggestive of an empty yard. Although such downsizing was repeated countless times throughout the nation, it was even worse for many towns and villages. For them, neither the service nor any replacement structures were left in the aftermath of this sea change in American travel. A visualization of the long history of Meridian’s prominentroleasapassengerterminal,ashighlighted inpreviouschapters,ispresentedbythenearbygraphical presentation, which displays data from selected issues of the Official Guide during the period from 1893 to 1978. Clearly evident is the steady increase in service to a peak of forty-four daily trains at the time of the 1929 stock market crash, along with the commanding presence of the Southern Railway system (and predecessors), including its financial control of M&O. It is seen that GM&O’s exit from passenger service in 1958 left the city with only an overnight Illinois Central train serving Shreveport and the Southerner, one of nation’s early postwar streamlined trains. IC service lasted another ten years, while Southern’s trains continued into the Amtrak era. Commonoccurrencesofthisperiodweresegmentedschedules ,whichresultedwhenonestatealloweda train to be discontinued while an adjoining state did not.Meridianwasaparticipantintwoofthese.Southern ’s New Orleans–Washington Pelican service (Nos. 41 and 42) was first canceled south of York, Alabama, although its equipment would operate out of Meridianforanumberofmonthsduetocrewandequipment needs. In a similar case, IC’s Meridian–Shreveport 124 125 facing top: A graphical depiction of Meridian’s history of daily arrivals and departures from 1893 to 1979. The data were compiled in 1994 from Official Guides by Bill Shafer for the Southern Railway Historical Association. J. Parker Lamb. facing bottom: In its last years, the Southerner shrank in size and required only a single diesel unit south of Birmingham. In 1969 it passes a switch crew at work on the south end of the Meridian yard. J. Parker Lamb. below: A trio of GP50’s leads a Southern southbound intermodal train past the small station that was rebuilt in late 1960 from a single-story wing of the original building. It would last until the present structure was constructed in 1997. J. Parker Lamb. 126 Powered by a quartet of rebuilt E8’s, the Southern Crescent pauses at Meridian during its first months of service in 1971. J. Parker Lamb. Five Illinois Central Geeps lead a freight through the heavy forests west of Meridian in 1971. Three of the veteran units have been repainted in white-and-orange colors, and the lead unit has also received a low nose. J. Parker Lamb. 127 MORE CHANGES trains were canceled in Mississippi but not in Louisiana , thus requiring a Vicksburg–Shreveport roundtrip at the end. Although America’s 140-year history of privately operated railroad passenger service ended with the creation of Amtrak in 1971, Meridian immediately became a participant in a unique experiment. Southern Railwaywasoneofonlytworailroadsnationwidethat refused to give Amtrak permission to operate trains over its lines (the other was Denver & Rio Grande Western in Colorado and Utah). Although Southern ’s senior vice presidents recommended that the road sign a contract with Amtrak, President Graham Claytordecidedinsteadtoinaugurateapremiertrain, the Southern Crescent, onathrice-weeklyschedulebetween Washington and New Orleans that connected with Amtrak trains at various points (see Plates 4 and 5). This arrangement lasted until December 1979, when the road finally agreed to accept Amtrak operations , which were then expanded to include a daily train, the Crescent, over the same route as the original Southerner. An ironic twist to Southern’s original response to government-run trains is the commonly accepted notion that Claytor’s later tenure as Amtrak’s president represented one of his greatest professional successes. With continued success of the Amtrak Crescent through the 1980s, it is not surprising that the...