(rshsdepot) DeLand, FL

[I95BERNIEW_@_aol.com]

From today's News-Journal.
 
Bernie Wagenblast
 
DeLand train station renovations come  `round the bend 


By JAMES MILLER  
Richard Conner remembers getting roused by the 2 a.m. telephone call. The  
DeLand train station was on fire.  
By the time Conner, the station manager, got there, the flames were doused,  
but the damage was done. The roof of the freight room where the fire started 
was  mostly burned out -- it would leak for more than two decades -- and the 
walls  and floors throughout were sooty black.  
It was Jan. 1, 1982.  
``There was just stuff laying all over,`` said Conner, who, after some time  
away, manages what is now the Amtrak station on Old New York Avenue.  
``Everything was tinged with smoke. ``  
Things are looking a whole lot better these days.  
This week, workers are putting final touches on a $424,000 restoration to the 
 almost 90-year-old station. A ribbon-cutting is set for noon Thursday.  
``There`s no comparison,`` Conner said last week as passengers collected  
outside on a platform newly tinged in popular 1920s-era flower-pot red, squash  
gold and apple green. ``It`s a beautiful job.``  
Restoration officials hope out-of-towners and locals agree. Getting the  
historic station, designed in 1918, up to snuff wasn`t easy.  
``This is the place when you`ve been away, you come back and it means home,`` 
 said Julie Scofield, Volusia County`s historic preservation officer. ``For  
travelers, for many people, this is DeLand, this is the first thing they see  
that signifies that.  
``It`s really a landmark for the community.``  
Within a week of the fire, deputies had arrested a worker from what was then  
Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, which has its winter home across the tracks 
from  the station. The apparent motive was to cover a robbery.  
The arrest may have come quickly, but the station`s recovery did not.  
For years, tickets were sold out of a trailer, while the station fell into  
disrepair, Scofield said. Those days didn`t end until 1988, when high school  
students and civic groups gave it a $20,000 touch-up. The work helped, but much 
 remained to be done.  
``The freight room was all boarded up and the existing charred roof continued 
 to leak,`` said Mark Shuttleworth, mayor of Lake Helen and proprietor of 
Florida  Victorian Architectural Antiques, the last subcontractor on the project. 
``At  least they could sell tickets to passengers here.``  
Starting in the 1990s, the Volusia County Metropolitan Planning Organization  
wanted to do a more serious renovation with state grant money.  
The money was held up until transportation officials in 2003 determined a  
national agreement between CSX and Amtrak provided public access -- a  
requirement for the grant. CSX owns the track. Amtrak owns the station.  
With money secured, the county -- which administered the grant -- hired the  
general contractor, ACI, Tampa.  
Then its subcontractors got to work restoring what could be salvaged -- a  
charred freight door, its cast iron roller and the beams under the outdoor  
canopy, for example. They recreated other things like the textured glass for  what 
had been boarded-up windows, and put in new outdoor lighting and poured a  
new -- and more accessible -- platform.  
It looked good to traveler Harvey Small, on his way back to Palm Beach County 
 from Washington, D.C., last week.  
Small, who does some woodworking himself, learned to appreciate trains when  
he was in the U.S. Army in Germany and he`s been riding them ever since. Last  
week was his fifth time through the DeLand station, where he had been dropped 
 off by a friend. He said he thought it was abandoned the first time he came. 
 
No more.  
``I was happy, man,`` he said. ``I saw people here. Fresh coat of paint, you  
know. Like I told (my friend,) it`s a good thing I didn`t get here earlier, I 
 would have been working on it.`` 

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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #1466
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org