Georgia Focus - Train Day

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark on the Georgia
and Use Network. Deep in the heart of southeast Georgia
on the banks of the Loaltimaha River, Wayne County beckons
visitors to a community of charm and natural splendor. Like
Train Day October the eighteenth, It's a day they celebrate
train in the city that trains built, Jessup, Georgia. Here
today to talk about this is Janet Royal, vice president

(00:33):
of the Wayne County Tourism Board. You've got train Day
coming up. Train Day's coming up in a few days.
Talk about train Day and why it's necessary there In.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
Jessup, we are known as the city the Train's built.
We have two major railroad lines when the train traffic
was really much more for passengers than it is today.
But we have the Atlantic Clastline railroad line, the North
South Line that runs all the way up the eastern

(01:03):
seaboard that's now CSX, and then we have the North
South Line that was making in Brunswick. It's now Norfolk Southern,
so they crossing chess Up and we have a rich
train history and heritage here.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
You really do down there. I was there and I
stayed right where you are in the in the caboose.
Talk about that kaboose. You're in the co kaboosh now,
but wy don't you talk about that.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
The kaboose was originally obtained by the Wayne County Beautification
Committee back in the days of Keep America Beautiful and
it was their office and after Keep America Beautiful kind
of went its way, it was also the office of
Wayne County Beautification Committee and they operated the kaboose with

(01:53):
a green thumb worker whose name was Bobby Beasley. And
that's who the platform is named or right by the
kaboos and that's a tourism's office was in it while
they were renovating the depot. And now it's an overnight
place to stay. It's a it's not a B and B.
It's just a B. We don't have the breakfast, but

(02:14):
we do have the bed. It's a fully equipped kaboose.
It's very nice, it really is.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
I really enjoyed staying there and it does have does
have the coffee though these have that, so you have
the coffee, but no, no no breakfast to it. If
people if we want to get that train to get
the depot, where do they need to go gir to
your website.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
They We have a website wynetourism dot com. It's the
name of the Kaboos is Magic's Place, and we have
an employee at the Tourism Board, which is in the
Jesup train depot. You can contact Tanya. Her number is
nine one two four two seven three two three three,
or you can email her at Tanya at Wayne Tourism

(02:59):
dot and she can hook you up with accommodations. We
do not rent it online. You have to either call
her email.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Okay, good, it's really nice. So you've got to rent it.
You got to rent in advance too, right, you stays
pretty rented out.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yes, you need to. We need to have advanced notice
that you're coming. And you need to also understand that
there it is on the train tracks and a lot
of trains do go by.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
That is true. I want to talk about that. Trains
go by there all the time, all night long. And
it's interesting. I liked it. I like the fact that
they did because that you know, you're in a train town.
What about the train's gonna be going that on train
day that are the regular schedule or where they have
a different schedule that day.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
They they'll operate on their regular schedule. What CSX usually
does is they will do a slow order when they
know that there are going to be a lot of
people in the vicinity of the train tracks, but usually
they will come through at a regular speed. They can,
they are clear to come through at forty five, but

(04:09):
they can. They're very good neighbors to have. They are
aware of what's going on in the community and they're
as involved with safety as we are. So they they
will have a slow order, but they will come through
twenty four seven, three sixty five.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Oh good, Now they'll have Operation Operation Life there will
be there too, right.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
Operation Life Saver will be at our train deep at
our They will be at the depot for train Day.
We have quite a few activity scheduled.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
Talk about that day, yeah, talk about that.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
We will have inside the depot is a hands off
area and it's going to have a model train town.
We're going to have. I was notified this morning that
another real fan coming from Savannah is bringing some more
tracks and it's set up like a little town and
that's inside the depot, and there are also other model

(05:11):
trains inside the depot. Outside the depot in the parking area.
We have a children's play area which is five train
tables that the kids can pick up and move the
train cars around and play with and try not to
mess up too much. But they're free to play, don't

(05:32):
get outside. And then we have a puzzle area and
we have some coloring pages and we have a trackless
train that everything at our Train Day is free and
you can ride the trackless train. We have story time
at ten thirty. The story is going to be tootled

(05:53):
the train and that's going to be read by miss
Edna Williamson, who is a retired librarian from our public library.
We also will have a story walk on the storefront
windows on across on the stores across from the depot
and that's going to be teat the Cats train trip
and a story walk the families with children can come

(06:18):
and they read each page. The pages are duplicated and
hanging on the windows of the stores and they each
they have an activity with them for the kids to complete.
They receive a ticket when they start the story walk
and at the end of the story walk they'll put
their ticket in basket for a drawing for a gift basket.

(06:39):
The story walks or part of our literacy community, literacy push.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Okay, now is it also it's arch Archway days? Is
there arch Fest, arch Fish, arch Fist days art the
same time?

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Right arch Fest? Uh, this is going to be a break.
We're bringing back arch Fest. There's a train coming by
now bringing back arch Fest. We lasted it twenty twenty
two and the city and the DDA director Carol Lopez
working very hard and bringing back arch Fest. There is

(07:15):
an arch at the fountain right by the depot, and
the fountain was built from bricks when one of our
local businesses unfortunately had a fire and burned and had
to be rebuilt, and they took those bricks and cleaned
them up and got them and made a fountain out
of it at the depot. And Jessup had an arch

(07:39):
on the road back in the fifties where three oh
one O three forty one came through town, but they
had to remove it for tractor trailer traffic. So arch
that's where arch Fest got its name. And arch Fest
is right down the street. There's a one block difference
in where train day is probably half a block, but

(08:00):
you'll be able to see everything that's going on, so
they can go to downtown just up on Cherry Street
for Arch Fresh and come down northwest broad to us
for train days.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Now out there on train day you have certain areas
that three or four you know, a few areas that
you can listen to the train track, You can listen
to the radio in the in the trains that are
going by. What are those we have?

Speaker 2 (08:25):
We have three rail fan platforms with radios and the
one closer to the Norfolk Southern Line is called the
Bacon and Brunswick Platform and it's actually a double decker
where you can go up up to the second story
and take pictures of the trains or videos of the

(08:46):
trains as they come north south on the CSX line,
and there's a timer. Each one of the radios has
a timer on it. You can turn and the timer
will will play for a while you're there, and if
you leave and forget to turn it off, it turns
itself off. And then there's one at the Kaboos that's

(09:08):
the Bobby Beesy platform, and then there's one across on
the depot side of the tracks at the James Bland
Park where the city has put in swings and it's
actually on the building that's right there at the park
and that's the Atlantic and Gulf platform or the Atlantic

(09:28):
and Golf Radio. But the original train that came through
in eighteen fifty seven and would have been the Atlantic
and Golf Railroad. And there the train line that built
the trestle that comes across the river is not the
original trestle at doctor Town, but it's the trestle at
Doctortown now was built. That one was wood built construction

(09:53):
and it was built eighteen fifty seven by the Scriven
family of Savannah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
And you can use those radio any time. You don't
have to do it on train day. They just go
up there news.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Them right, that's correct, they're they're there all the time.
And we have people, we have had visitors. We've had
international visitors. We've had people from Canada, We've had people
from the UK, and then we've had people from across
the states. I know one particular family I spoke with
one day was from Kansas, and uh, it was a

(10:24):
Saturday morning and it was not very busy in the
train traffic world. And so I asked him. It was
a correct grandparents and their grandson, and I said, how
do you come and a train never comes by, he said.
People fish all the time and never catch a things,
so you just have to wait.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, you do.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
A lot of the real fans will have their own
radios now, but ours are programmed for both Norfolk Southern
and CSX, so you can hear train masters and engineers
and conductors talk with the train master in Jacksonville.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
And now Amtrak comes through there too too. Several times
I saw people sitting on waiting for an Amtrak train
early in the morning.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
At the southbound Yeah, southbound. The Silver Media. Back in
the day when passenger trains were really big, we had
the Atlantic Coastline line, and then just south of us
in Bruswick was Seaboard the Seaboard Airline, and Seaboard ran

(11:32):
a nice train called the Champion, and Atlantic Coastline had
the Silver Media, and when they merged in nineteen sixty
seven and became Seaboard Coastline that was the predecessor to CSX.
Then the Champion went away and the Silver Medior stayed,
and we still have the Silver Media. It stops in

(11:54):
the morning going south about seven point thirty eight o'clock
in the morning. The Silver Media go south and then
about six thirty at night. It's trained number ninety eight
and it goes north and then we all the ultro
train also comes through, but it does not stop, but
it comes through at a pretty fast clip. So we

(12:15):
actually have three am tracks, but two that stopped.

Speaker 1 (12:17):
Oh so tell us a little bit in looking at
that area, and you have the depot and all the
buildings face it on both sides. That's the way it
was back then. That's where many many train towns are.
But tell us a little bit about the history of
the area.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Well, it was the city that trains built. We had
a gentleman who came here in eighteen probably eighteen seventy
from Athleen County. He was a Civil War veteran. His
name was Willis Clary, and the train was already coming through.
It was stationed number six. Willis Clary paid for the

(12:57):
town to be surveyed and his house is uh still
standing and it has a business in it city lot
number one. And he is the one who convinced James R.
Jessop of the Macon and Brunswick Railroad to have the
Macon and Brunswick Cross here. It was Atlantic and Golf
and it became the Savannah Florida and Western it had.

(13:19):
It went through many changes as it grew into adulthood
in the railway world. But the city streets are named
for trees. We have Cherry Street, Elm Street, Palm Street,
and then out of the city it was numbered streets first, second,
and third Street, except for Macon Street and Brunswick Street

(13:44):
and Macon and Brunswick. I believe that Willis Clary did
that in honor of his friend James R. Jessup. And
there's a controversy or an unknown factor with who were
we exactly named for. There are three possible Jessups, James R. Jessup,
Thomas Sidney Jessup, and Mars K. Jessup. And my money

(14:05):
is on James R. Jessp because of his affiliation with
Willis Clary, his affiliation with the railroad, and his land
transactions that he conducted inside the city.

Speaker 1 (14:18):
Why were the cities named after trees is because they
have a lot of trees that they tree business in
the area.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
They we do have a lot of tread But interestingly enough,
the city fathers in the early nineteen tens in nineteen
twenties decided that they were going to do a beautification
project in the downtown Central Business district and they put
up China berries and everybody fussed about it because they

(14:47):
were not native trees, so they had to come like,
I don't think the crak myrtle's native. Eden. People are
always doing something with the crape myrtle.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (14:58):
So that's just how Willis named them.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
And it became the city, the City of train what's
the name of the city with all.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
The city trains built.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
The city trains built. It really did, because you can
see that's that's on the way going across from you,
that all the way across to the coast to Brunswick
from Valdosta or something like that, and going that way
and going going north and south too. It really is
the city of trains built. It really is.

Speaker 2 (15:25):
The train. The train was the major mode of transportation
back in the horse and buggy day. There was a
train stop about every ten miles and with jessup with
the depot, our existing depot was actually the passenger depot
and then across Cherry Street. Uh. In fact, they're doing

(15:46):
an extension now of the Bland Park. The CSX has
had reached an agreement, the real estate Division has reached
an agreement with the city of Jessup and they're extending
that green space all the way down from Cherry to Orange.
And on this side of that was where the freight
depot was burned in nineteen fifty five. Yeah, that we had.

(16:11):
We had two depots.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Okay, is that where the brick building is now, that's.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
Where a parking lot is now, Oh, okay, across from
Union Station Brewing. Okay, And there's some city that's a
city parking lot that has an ev charging area there.
So if you come with your electric car and you
need a place to charge, then there's one right there
for you. At the corner of Southwest and Cherry and downtown.

(16:41):
The central business district grew up on the depot side
of the track and the residential area grew up on
the other side of the track, so it wasn't was
that mixed use at that time.

Speaker 1 (16:57):
And there's a there's an area right there. I had
the depot, and you said there was an International Harvester
right there places it looks like a gas station, but
it was those as a harbor was it.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
Was an International Harvester tractor dealership. And then it was
of a car lot.

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Oh really, Yeah, oh gosh.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yes it was. And then the the Murphy Builders Supply
which is on down across from our Heritage Center. Our
Heritage Center is a railroad section house. When the section
hands were out they had to straighten the rails and
do all the maintenance work, and they needed a overnight
place to stay while they were out in the country.

(17:41):
And said the railroad had section houses all along the line.
And then when they got more mechanized and had trucks
and were able to travel more easily, then they sold
off the section houses uh into private use. And our
set house came from Whaley Street and it has been

(18:04):
renovated into a local history museum. It's actually in between
the Bobby Beasley platform and the Making a Brunswick platform,
the double decker. That's that's a railroad detection house.

Speaker 1 (18:16):
And then you go down beyond there and you have
the World Water Tower, the big tall tower, and the building,
the water building is still there. Talk about that. That's
that was really interesting to see.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
That the standing water pipe was the original water system
when they did a water distribution system. Up until that time,
everybody had their own wells and and they had a
public well that was actually in the Street about in
the middle of in front of where International that International

(18:48):
Harvester building would be. But that was the original water
tower or called a standing water pipe. And then behind
it was the water department that UH created during w
P A with President Roosevelt, and that was some of
the money that came in and they actually did water

(19:09):
and sewer and that w p A building. And just
beyond that is the overpass, a single lane. You have
to yield, yeah, and make sure nobody else is coming.
But there's a single lane that passes under a UH
not exactly a trestle, but an overpassed thing for the
Norfolk Southern line.

Speaker 1 (19:30):
That's right, you do do you have to pass that?
I was kind of it was if you're going to curve.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, you have to bind your manner.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we went straight on out that
way and you you told us that that one building
out there that I said it was looked like a hotel.
You said, well, it was a jail in the police department.
That building was out there, that's still that that's still around.
That was fascinating to me.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
That was on the that would be considered the edge
of town, and beyond it was original city cemetery, and
that would have been on the edge of town. It
was you know, the downtown, the area, well that residential
city park too. Really the early years it was not
very big and so you got to the county I

(20:20):
mean the city limits pretty quick.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Yeah. On train day also, you'll you'll have things like
vendors and food and things like that as well. Right
besides this, and you can look at all these places
we talk about today right there on train Day, right,
they're gonna be right there, right.

Speaker 2 (20:39):
It'll be right there, it'll be and they will have
food trucks. They She's had a good response. The DDA
director is handling the vendor part of the event, where
tourism is Training Day and d d A is arch Fest,
but we advertise it as training Day at the arch
or train Day in arch Fest. They'll have a kid

(21:01):
play area, bounce houses and that kind of thing. And
we have several downtown restaurants that I would highly recommend visiting.
And it's really a really booming downtown really for the
size of the city. But we have a walk in
theater the Strand has been there since nineteen twenty four.

(21:23):
We have a b strow in the Chop House bay It.
We have a one Love Island which is Caribbean cuisine.
We have El Dorado which is Japanese Mexican. We have
Alex Sports Bar and Alex Sports Bar is he's the
restaurant that whenever we have events like touch a Truck

(21:44):
or whatever he takes, he gets the most foot traffic.
Oh really, because everybody's right outside his door. So we
tried to say hello to Alex at Alex Sports Bar
where we can.

Speaker 1 (21:57):
And what days will this me.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
It's going to be Saturday, October eighteenth, and our hours
are ten to four. And this year we've extended the
hours of the trackless train. Before he came from eleven
to two and we found out that that was not good.
That we said had a lot of kids and a
lot of families that were coming through. So this year

(22:22):
we've extended his hours and so you'll be able to
do that. And we have asked Andy the engineer. We
have a retired engine at CESX engineer. He will come
at one thirty to the depot and last year was
our first year with Andy and he answered as much
question from the kids and as we did grown ups.

(22:46):
So grown ups there are trained fans who never had
the opportunity to be on a train that come for
this thing. We will get good response to media such
as your program and the advertising that we do with
Georgia PLOVERTT Broadcasting. It brings people in from South Carolina
and Florida, and so we appreciate all the media attention

(23:10):
that we get. It is really helpful and just brings
in a diverse group of trains in do you fend?

Speaker 1 (23:21):
Do you get a lot of questions to You're the
person to ask, You're the historian, You're the one who knows.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
I have a good friend, Melba, Melba Murphy, who is
also she is the daughter of a CSX engineer. Her
father since passed away, of course, but she will be
inside the depot. I usually am outside the depot, but
I will be around. If anybody wants to ask questions,

(23:51):
we can be found. And then we have the people
inside the depot with the train village that will answer
all your quick and feel you in on everything that
they do with their that hobby of model railroading.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Well, will the donut shop be open? I want I
want to give them a plug because they are really
good donuts. I ate them on the way.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Back, Sugar and Spice will be open. They open on
Saturdays until they run out of donut and you do
need the best donuts that you will ever eat. They
are really really good. They are on Thursday, Friday and Saturday,
but on Saturday they will close pretty well once the

(24:35):
donuts are gone, so come early if you want to
get a donut.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
So Train Day October the eightheenth and Jessup, Georgia Downtown Jessup.
It's really you gotta go see it, and you got
to go see the caboose and just you got to
see all of it. It's really nice. It's really neat
down there, and I appreciate you talking to me and
taking time to time out to talk about train Day.
It's gonna be a lot of fun, right, it.

Speaker 2 (24:58):
Is gonna be a lot of fun and we look
forward to everyone coming and having a good time.

Speaker 1 (25:04):
That's Janet Royal, vice president of the Wayne County Tourism Board.
You can visit them at Waynetourism dot com. Train Day
is October the eighteenth. Don't forget it. Go to Jessup
and see it. It's going to be a lot of fun.
And to offer a special thanks today to Mark Tootle
WIFO Radio for his support and putting this show together.

(25:24):
If you have questions or comments on today's show, you
can email me, John Clark at jeordihusnetwork dot com. Thanks
for listening, I'll talk to you next week right here
in your favorite local radio station on Georgia Focus