Semaphore - September 1953

Semaphore SERVICE WITH COURTESY SEPTEMBER, 1953 Piedmont & Northern and Durham & Southern Railways

[photo of church]

Editorial Page

THE COMMUNITY HEART

[advertisement] Give Gladly [photo of all-American family] THE UNITED WAY through your UNITED APPEAL In Charlotte it's the United Appeal

Fall is the time of the year when good citizens everywhere turn their talents to the task of raising, in one campaign, the funds required to support dozens of charitable and character-building organizations.

In many communities the compaign is conduced by the Community Chest which includes many organizations but not some of the larger national institutions such as the Red Cross. In others—and their number is constantly increasing—a United Appeal combines all of the community's fund-raising efforts into one giant campaign. Both methods greatly reduce administrative costs and conserve civic manpower. The net result is that each dollar contributed does more good and the burden on the individuals who give their time for the campaign is lessened.

We firmly believe that the United Appeal and, to a lesser degree, the Community Chest is the best and most efficient means of financing the many agencies which depend upon public support. Individual campaigns would result in a far greater expenditure of funds for conducting the campaigns, a far greater waste of manpower, and the exasperating annoyance of being solicited several dozen times a year.

United Appeal and Community Chest time is fast approaching in the cities served by these roads and in which our employees and their families live. Your management strongly believes in and endorses these campaigns and urges you to support them to the limit of your heart. In so doing you will make your town a better place in which to live.

KEEPING TRACK [drawing of back of train]

TRANSGAS, the publication of the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Corporation of Houston, Texas, recently carried a short feature story on Old Ironsides No. 2, the ancient P & N streetcar that is now enshrined in a public park at Gastonia. Old No. 2, decommissioned in 1948, was the last streetcar to operate in North Carolina. In the same issue was a 15-page pictorial article on Gastonia.

E.S.C. QUARTERLY, a publication of the Employment Security Commission of North Carolina, is planning to publish a detailed article on the history and development of railroads in North Carolina. Editor M. R. Dunnagan is now gathering material for the history. The Durham & Southern and Piedmont & Northern will have a prominent part in the article.

CHARLOTTE TEACHERS will be guests of the P & N for the second time during the annual Business-Education-Ministers Day on November 17. On B-E-M Day, an event sponsored by the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce, teachers and ministers have an opportunity to visit various businesses and manufacturing enterprises in the city.

SIAMESE TWINS seem to have caused quite a stew on the Northern Pacific recently. A perplexing problem arose as to whether to require Siamese twins to pay one fare or two fares and, needless to say, conductors couldn't find the answer in their rule books. The problem finally got to the railroad's legal department which ruled that when "they are joined together that when one dies the other must die and where one must go the other must go, one fare is valid for their transportation."

Semaphore VOLUME 9 NUMBER 9 SEPTEMBER, 1953 Published by the Piedmont & Northern and Durham & Southern Railway Companies. Address all communications to Edigor, Semaphore, P. O. Box 480, Charlotte, N. C.

EDITOR THOMAS G. LYNCH Director of Industrial Development and Public Relations

CORRESPONDENTS Elizabeth N. Watt ....................... Anderson Lennie Featherstone .................. Belmont Elsie K. Walker ........................... Charlotte Dora A. Whitaker ........................ Durham Gladys M. Bottoms ...................... Durham Jean Greene ................................ Gastonia Delia H. Brown ........................... Greenville Evelyn Williams .......................... Greenville Sarah Y. Stroud ........................... Greenwood Lucille M. Dameron .................... Mt. Holly H. W. Kay ................................... Spartanburg Katherine Brown ........................ Varina

IN THIS ISSUE . . . Birth of a Railroad ............................ 5 Profile—T. R. Rhodes ........................ 8 Dieselization Approved .................... 9 People and Places ........................... 10 Welcome Mat Is Out ........................ 12 Boy Wonder of the Carpet Industry ............................. 14 Along the Line.................................17

THIS MONTH'S COVER . . . Abbey Cathedral, focal point of the campus of Belmont Abbey College, towers majestically above the pleasant countryside only a few rail lengths from the Piedmont & Northern's Belmont branch. Last Spring the famous Catholic institution celebrated its 75th year of service to its church and community. The handsome cathedral and other college buildings have been a familiar sight to trainmen on the N. C. Division for years.

[photo of James Duke] JAMES BUCHANAN DUKE (1856-1925) President, 1911-1920

[photo of William Lee] WILLIAM STATES LEE President, 1921-1934

Birth of a Railroad

The past, Carl Sandburg once wrote, is a bucket of ashes. True, perhaps. But what, more than a bucket of ashes, could remind us better of a fire that once burned brightly and gloriously. The roots of our own railroads grow deeply into the ashes of the golden era of empire builders—the age of the Vanderbilts, the Fords, the Rockefellers, the Dukes. This is the first in a series of several articles which will attempt to reconstruct the birth of the Piedmont and Northern Railway, its adolescent years, andn its development into maturity.

JANUARY, 1911, was just an ordinary month in an ordinary year.

President William Howard Taft was urging Congress to appropriate $5 million to fortify the new canal in Panama. War drums were thumping along the border between Haiti and Santo Domingo. A daredevil flyer flew 13 miles in a frail craft and landed on a wooden platform built over the afterdeck of a Navy cruiser. There were the usual murders, suicides, and buggy accidents. Corn whiskey, rye, and gin were being advertised at $1.50 a gallon; a Buick automobile was priced at $550; and a good five-room house could be rented for $15.00 a month.

The big news down in Carolina that January—in Greenville, Spartanburg, Charlotte, Anderson, Gastonia—concerned a proposed interurban electric railroad that would link together some of Carolina's most prosperous towns. James B. Duke, esteemed tobacco and electric power tycoon, was making a tour of the Piedmont to explain the idea. It was front-page news everywhere he went.

Mr. Duke and his associates were out to sell a dream. For two years they had been formuating plans for a great interurban railroad to serve the budding textile industry, connect street railway systems in a number of Piedmont cities, and provide fast, dependable freight and passenger transportation between the points it served. The organization of two predecessor companies were already an accomplished fact. Now they were ready to unfold their consolidation plans before the public.

A community project

Mr. Duke had already decided to invest heavily in the enterprise himself. But he wanted citizens in the communities involved to have a financial interest in the project, too, so that he could depend on public support and enthusiasm for the venture. He also saw the necessity of obtaining an indication of sup-

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