Here, Old Alabama Rails offers stories and photographs submitted by former employees and their descendents. They include reflections on individual people as well as various tales of work on the railroad.

Buddy Wilson in front of St. Clair Station.

When I was a little boy, I lived above the St. Clair train depot near Lowndesboro. My dad, Albert Jackson Wilson, known as Jack, was the freight agent and railway express agent for the Atlanta and West Point Railroad. I lived in that train station from first grade in 1940 until I was in the tenth grade in 1949.

Dad started off with the L&N Railroad in Greenville, working all up and down that railroad. I don’t know who taught him telegraphy. That was the key to his job. That was a fast communication. He did telegraphy throughout the day. I think he worked during each day, but he had time to go to church. If he left the office, he sent someone a signal in Selma or Montgomery to tell them he was out of the office. With troop trains going day and night there were times when he never left the depot. The creek was about a quarter of a mile east of the station and local men sat guard next to the trestle. They lived in tents while they were guarding.

In cotton season bales of cotton were loaded into boxcars. Sometimes I helped him load the boxcars. He had a special handtruck he used to put the bale on the train car. Our bathroom was at the end of the freight depot and was very cold in the winter, but we had a little electric heater. We had to walk 40 or 50 feet to the bathroom. We had a pump that pumped water in the bathroom. 

The trains came within about 20 feet of my bedroom. I saw lots of troops on the trains. The Army Air Corps at Maxwell AFB trained pilots. I remember once a man woke us up in the middle of the night because he had crashed his plane in the Alabama River, two or three miles away. He had walked to the depot carrying his parachute, which he didn’t get to use. Dad called somebody to tell Maxwell that we had him. 

Jack & Buddy Wilson, July 1942

We rode the train into Montgomery about once a week to buy groceries, sometimes twice a week, because we could ride the trains free. It was nineteen miles to Montgomery. We would buy groceries at the A&P on Bell Street, buy dinner at a restaurant, and go to a movie. There were five theatres in Montgomery. I don’t know how long the train ride took but to me it seemed like it took forever. Every so often we could get a pass and go to Atlanta. 

Once when we got to Montgomery a tornado had just hit across the river from the railroad tracks. We saw the damage. We had to wait a while before we could get off the train.

I had chores at the depot. I had to get stove wood and bring it into the house because we had a wood burning fireplace in the big room, and for the kitchen stove. In the office down below was a iron potbellied stove that was wood and coal burning. One of my jobs was taking out the ashes.

My room was downstairs off the railway express area. It was in the warehouse but off the railway express. It was probably smaller than I remember, and the bathroom was at the end of the warehouse. The warehouse was on the east end of the station. The office was one third of the way down on the track side. On the end of the building toward the west you had a white and a colored waiting area with a ticket window to buy the tickets. 

Jim & Buddy Wilson Trackside at St. Clair Station

Dad was the agent, the freight agent and telegrapher. He also had a phone with an extender device so he could move away from his desk and do something with the telephone. It extended the phone two or three feet. You had an ear piece you held in your hand and you had to talk into a microphone on the body of the telephone. It was the railroad telephone, only for railroad business. In later years at the depot we did have a crank phone upstairs but I don’t remember what year.

Passenger mail trains came by one in the morning and back, one in the afternoon and back, then you had troop trains, very long trains coming through at all times. Some trains were just soldiers and some were just equipment like tanks. At the end of the warehouse beyond the bathroom there was a big deck where the bales of cotton were kept. You had a sliding door on each side of the warehouse. At times I had to go open the doors to let in fresh air.

The warehouse was usually either full of cotton or full of something. Down the tracks toward Selma, maybe a quarter of a mile at least there was a lumber mill that had loads picked up by freight trains. Also there was a stop for pulpwood which was loaded in another place nearby.

Dad put the mail in a bag and hung it on an assembly and the mailman on the train in the mail car would pick it up. There were freight trains too. Railway express was sort of like a pre-UPS. You could get smaller packages shipped quickly. It was a little faster than the regular freight and it got daily priority, going out anyway.

Buddy Wilson Trackside at St. Clair Station freight loading area

Another thing Dad had to do when trains came was signal the conductor through. He had a signal control in his office. It went to a system that raised boards on the signal board outside on a pole next to the track. He had two big handles, eighteen to twenty inches long, that you had to grip. You would pull it back and change the signal. One would be a sign to tell the conductor to go ahead, one to stop. There may have been a third for mail. The post office was across the street in the country store where you could buy gas, clothing, and groceries like corn meal and get your mail. My mother worked as the postmistress.

Looking at the train station on the south side was the family entrance or place to park a car. The tracks were on the north side of the station. The entrance was one third the way down to the west. Where you came into the building we stored firewood there. There was a foyer, and a closet on the left, and the stairway on the left going upstairs to the apartment where we lived. If you didn’t go up the stairs you would go straight in to Dad’s office. My room was four or five steps into the warehouse, on the left, closest to the track. That was underneath Mother and Dad’s room. The kitchen, a big family room and one bedroom were upstairs.

My older brother Jim had a room in what used to be the white waiting room. They closed off the outside door to the white waiting room and cut a door at the window where you would have gotten tickets. They then just had one waiting room. I don’t remember what year that happened.

Mother and Dad had a closet in their bedroom. In that closet Dad cut a hole in the floor; put a ladder down the wall into my room. He made a trap that set over the hole.  When I wanted to go down I just moved the trap and went down the ladder.

It was exciting to live in the Depot. We moved to East Point, Georgia when I was a sophomore in high school, but those days at St. Clair station are very special to me.