RE: (rshsdepot) Burkeville, VA

[Colin.Harding_@_do.treas.gov]

Hi Bernie:

Nice mention of our railroad station - Fairfax Station - it sure a labor of
love when it was moved board-by-board. As the senior docent/historian,
having a great time.

Colin Harding
www.fairfax-station.org

- -----Original Message-----
From: Bernie Wagenblast [mailto:brwagenblast_@_home.com]
Sent: Friday, December 14, 2001 3:32 PM
To: RSHS Depot
Subject: (rshsdepot) Burkeville, VA


Burkeville train station move is smooth

BY KATHRYN ORTH
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Dec 14, 2001

BURKEVILLE - At 11:30 a.m. yesterday, Burkeville Mayor Raymond B. George Jr.
set two bottles of champagne on the steel beam supporting one end of the
Burkeville train station.

And there the bottles stayed as the 350-ton station, with its supporting
beams jacked up on wheels, rolled inch-by-inch across railroad tracks and a
highway to its new home in Burkeville's town park.

"We'll open [the champagne] and have a little celebration at the end," when
the station is set on a new foundation and opens as a transportation and
community center and museum for the town, George said.

That opening is still several months away, though. The focus of the project
yesterday was to get the 1915 station moved about 200 yards from its
original location, across the Norfolk Southern tracks and U.S 360/460
business route to its new site, where the old Burkeville High School once
stood.

The town, with help from Nottoway County, saved the station from demolition
10 years ago by declaring it a historic structure. It was boarded up and
hadn't been used for passenger service since the 1970s.

Norfolk Southern gave the building to the town, but town officials were
puzzled for years over how to use the track-locked station.

It was considered too dangerous to use as a community center because of the
trains rumbling along both sides.

Several consultants had recommended tearing it down. But George and a
citizens' committee headed by Pete Hillsman found Expert Movers, of Virginia
Beach, which moved the Cape Hatteras lighthouse two years ago.

The movers dug below the station, removed the concrete slab on which it was
built, jacked up the building and supported it with three layers of steel
beams. After a month of preparation, the building was ready to roll
yesterday, as many of Burkeville's 535 residents watched.

The station moved on self-propelled, hydrostatically powered wheel units,
controlled by a computer system and operated by one person moving a lever
attached to the side of the building.

What officials thought would take less than an hour took most of the day.

The station had to move through a morass of mud from recent rains, then make
a sharp left turn across the railroad tracks. Steel ramps laid across the
tracks were moved to make the turn less sharp for the 2,800-square-foot
building.

When the building finally reached the park, every brick was intact and the
bottles of champagne were not even shaken up.

The Virginia Department of Transportation provided more than $400,000 in
grants for the move. But the town is looking for money to pay for its
restoration and remodeling, George said.

Burkeville's station is not the first to be moved in Virginia, depot expert
Donald Traser said yesterday.

The brick Southern Railway Depot in Danville and the stone Norfolk and
Western Depot in Bedford were moved in the early 1900s.

More recently, the Stapleton station was moved to Lynchburg and the Fairfax
Station depot was moved across the road. Both are wooden.

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Contact Kathryn Orth at (804) 3926605 or korth_@_timesdispatch.com

Link to station photo:
http://media.gatewayva.com/photos/rtd/12142001/1214train.jpg

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