This issue of the Newsletter marks the first anniversary of my work as Editor. The opportunity to serve the Society in this role is one that I greatly appreciate. We strive to improve the Newsletter, and continue to solicit your suggestions. The overall goal of the Newsletter is to provide members with information on the Society’s administrative, research, publication and meeting activities, along with feature articles that you’re not likely to find anywhere else. I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our Editorial Advisory Board, our regular columnists, John Gruber, J. Parker Lamb, and Steamdome, along with our other contributors.

We are pleased to present a piece on Samuel Spencer, the first president of the Southern Railway, by Dick Hillman. Dick is a Curator at the Southern Museum of Civil War & Locomotive History in Kennesaw, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta, and the author of a piece on that museum in the Fall 2005 issue of the Newsletter. Samuel Spencer, who died on November 26, 1906 when another train collided into the train carrying his private car, had a distinguished career, and spent his last years at the helm of one of the south’s most prosperous railroads, which operates today as part of Norfolk Southern. Dick’s story begins on page 10.

Although it seems a bit early, since this is the last issue of the Newsletter to be published in 2006, it is appropriate to extend best wishes for the upcoming Holidays to everyone. See you next year!

Due to production errors, the following corrections to the Summer 2006 are in order:

1. The line drawing of Consolidation 1316, appearing on page 11 of Steamdome’s article, was not scanned properly, leaving the impression that the wheels were wider than they were tall. This drawing is reproduced above, with the correct proportions. Many thanks to Andrew Dow for pointing this out, who said that "The wheels seem to be a good ten percent wider than they are tall: if this really was the case, she must have ridden like a pig!"

2. On page 4 of the Rails in the Rockies II report, the last sentence was cut off - it should have read: "The town of Antonito, the eastern terminus of the Cumbres & Toltec, sits at milepost 281, at an elevation of 7, 888 feet above sea level."

In my role as Executive Vice-President, I want to thank you for your continued support of our society as well as to make you aware of some current needs.

For some years, the R&LHS Board of Directors has maintained our basic $25 annual membership fee as a means of encouraging new memberships. Today, after years of inflation, our fee is one of the lowest of any railroad historical society in the U. S. However, our annual fee still provides four newsletters and two issues of the acclaimed Railroad History journal. Clearly this is quite a bargain.

However, this policy has a downside, which has been manifested recently as an annual deficit of $10,000 in the society’s operating accounts. Thus I want to remind you of the two major programs we have available for those who wish to provide personal contributions to the continued vitality of our society.

To assist directly in erasing our operating deficits, you can make a gift of $10 or $20 beyond the basic fee when renewing your membership. Of course, we would be delighted if more members renew at the $50 or $75 level. Remember that any amount above $25 is tax deductible, due to the Society’s 501(c)3 non-profit designation.

Remember that the foregoing gifts are separate from those to Friends program, which was established to provide support for excellence programs and new thrusts. One half of Friends gifts are generally earmarked for the increased costs of Railroad History.

Another major issue for the Society is how to increase our membership. While we expect the demographics for those interested in historical events to produce an average age of about 60, this leads naturally to steady losses at the upper end. Thus my second request is that you attempt to bring in one new member during 2007. As selling points, you can use the society’s publications as well as our strong chapter structure and annual meeting, along with our modest annual cost. Chapters should be active in inviting to their meetings those from other rail-oriented organizations, many of whom may be unfamiliar with R&LHS.

The fabled "Lost Spike." Thomas Hill’s epic oil-on-canvas painting, "The Last Spike." The first locomotive of the Central Pacific Railroad. The first steam and diesel locomotives owned by the mighty Southern Pacific. The only surviving Santa Fe F7A, Southern Pacific E8A, and Cab Forward locomotives. America’s most comprehensive Toy Train exhibit. Weekend steam train rides six months each year. North America’s largest railroad reference archive and library. Regular changing exhibits highlighting railroad photography and art. A planned major expansion into the Southern Pacific Sacramento Shops complex.

What do these things have in common? They’re all part of today’s California State Railroad Museum, a railroad heritage institution operated by California State Parks and headquartered at Old Sacramento State Historic Park. Most R&LHS members are probably aware of the Museum; with over 550,000 annual visitors, it’s North America’s most popular railroad museum. But CSRM has grown over the years to become a lot more as well. This brief article will highlight some of the many recent initiatives and enhancements the Museum has been working on.

Lost—And Found
The biggest news this year in Sacramento railroad circles was the public unveiling of the fabled "Lost Spike." A nearly-identical twin to the golden Last Spike of transcontinental railroad fame, this 9-1/2 inch "Lost Spike" is complete with an attached, visually intriguing "sprue" left over from the casting process. Cast as part of the same order, engraved after the Great Event, and quietly held by the family of San Francisco developer David Hewes (who presented the Last Spike to Leland Stanford for use at Promontory, and later became Stanford’s brother-in-law), this fascinating artifact is now on permanent display in a specially designed, high-security case.

The Lost Spike, a nearly identical twin to the golden Last Spike of the transcontinental
railroad, now displayed at the California State Railroad Museum

In spring 2005, the Museum’s collections staff was alerted by colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution that the spike had been placed on consignment with a Southern California dealer. Research and negotiations began immediately, and by fall the spike had been authenticated and purchased with funds from the Museum’s Opportunity Acquisition Fund, managed by the California State Railroad Museum Foundation (the Museum’s non-profit partner).

While this acquisition was a major and high-profile one, the Museum has logged a number of important acquisitions over the last 10 years. In 1996, for instance, the Museum entered into a preservation partnership with Union Pacific Railroad involving artifacts (including a former Sunset Limited dining car and lounge car), historical records, and the former Sacramento Shops complex of the Southern Pacific. Plans call for the two largest structures in that complex to become the home of the proposed Railroad Technology Museum; more about that project later.

A truly immense acquisition came in late 2001, when the family of Thomas W. Sefton donated his extensive and internationally recognized collection of 20th Century toy trains, Buddy L riding toys and railroad-related artifacts to the Museum. Numbering over 7,000 individual items, many quite rare and some considered priceless, the artifact donation was accompanied by a considerable gift of funds. The collection was transported, stored, and organized, and proposals sought for a 3,300-square-foot exhibit. When it opened at the Museum in August 2004, the new exhibit "Small Wonders: The Magic of Toy Trains" became America’s most comprehensive toy train exhibit.

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Museum members, friends, supporters and volunteers are another "acquisition" that the Museum continually strives to bring aboard. Museum members now number nearly 10,000, and some 500 volunteers give regularly of their time and talents in support of a wide array of activities. School education programs have been improved and expanded, and public relations and promotional efforts maintain a high profile for the Museum. In November 2006, the Museum will host railway heritage professionals from throughout North America when the Association of Railway Museums and Tourist Railway Association, Inc. hold their second joint annual conference in Sacramento.

Reinventing the Dream
When the Railroad History Museum opened its doors to the public in 1981, the railroad industry still resembled —albeit largely in withered form—its classic structure dating back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The caboose was a familiar fixture, and train crew sizes had not yet been drastically reduced. The era of railroad mergers was in its infancy, and railroad corporations and their public relations efforts were largely regional in nature. The Museum’s exhibits and displays accordingly assumed that guests had a basic level of knowledge about the railroad.

Fast-forward to the 21st century. With a handful of major railroads now serving the entire country, cabooses vanquished from trains, and the ranks of railroaders greatly reduced in employment terms, the public’s awareness of things railroad-related have changed. Even though freight traffic is at record levels on America’s railroads, and light rail and commuter rail systems are expanding to weave suburbs together with urban centers, the typical American no longer knows much about railroads—except that more trains seem to be causing the gates to stay down longer at grade crossings.

Accordingly, the California State Railroad Museum in the early part of the 21st century began planning for a major refocusing of its galleries and exhibits. As part of its efforts, four primary themes were developed to guide interpretive planning and exhibit upgrades. A common goal was to help the public in general—and increasingly diverse audiences in particular—find something interesting, and personally relevant, in America’s railroad heritage. The four themes that now help the Museum frame its public programming are Mobility, Nation Building, Modernization, and Enterprise.

A $486,775 grant received in 2002 from the North American Railway Foundation made possible the reinstallation of a number of galleries and exhibit spaces to implement the new vision. In summer 2005, the reinstalled galleries and several new exhibits were unveiled. At the center of the new galleries are more than 18 new, life-sized figures of railroad workers. Positioned throughout the Museum in settings that replicate their original work environments, the figures include surveyors, construction managers and laborers, locomotive engineers, station agents, conductors, Pullman porters, dining car cooks and waiters, and track workers.

Left: An exhibit focused on track workers at the CSRM. This is one of more than 18 new, life-sized figures of railroad workers found throughout the museum, which depict life on the railroad.

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These figures help guests understand the important contributions made by workers from many diverse backgrounds, including: African American, American Indian, Chinese, Scottish, Irish, Mexican American, and Italian American. A central exhibit explores how railroaders’ personal and family lives were often intertwined with their work, and suggests that railroad employment really was a type of work unlike any other. An all-new photo gallery showcases more than two dozen images of the people of the railroad from the late 19th century through the mid-20th century. From weather-beaten faces of manual laborers to uniformed train crews and even managers, these images help to remind us that railroaders were as diverse as America itself.

In addition to the re-installed galleries and all-new exhibits, other significant enhancements include stunning, hand-painted murals of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the Museum’s Transcontinental Railroad gallery; the creation of a working telegraph system linking a re-created 1938 train station with a newly installed public information kiosk; and the rearrangement of several exhibits in the Museum Roundhouse to provide for more appropriate interpretive groupings.

The reinstallation project remains ongoing. In summer 2006, the latest gallery was unveiled in the Museum Roundhouse, with Southern Pacific 4-6-2 No. 2467 (Baldwin 1921) as its backdrop. Replicating a roundhouse/backshop environment, the new exhibit spaces help guests understand how maintenance schedules and practices worked on the railroad, and how no job was too large for the dedicated men and women who labored in these shops. (Owned by the City of Oakland, No. 2467 in 2005 was loaned to the Museum for an initial 10-year period by the Pacific Locomotive Association.)

Southern Pacific 1911 travel poster promoting its Netherlands Route

Temporary exhibitions are another Museum focus. Recent ones have featured photographs of modern-day railroaders, while the not-too-distant past has seen topical exhibitions focusing on subjects such as the "Happiest Train on Earth: Walt Disney’s Backyard Railroad," civil rights activist and Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organizer A. Philip Randolph, women in railroading, railroad drumheads, promotional photography and posters. Coming to the Museum in fall 2006 will be "Railroads and the American Industrial Landscape: Ted Rose Paintings and Photographs," an exhibition conceived and produced by the Center for Railroad Photography & Art. Back to the Future A Railroad Technology Museum was envisioned in the very first planning documents created to guide development of the California State Railroad Museum complex. Intended to complement the Railroad History Museum, the Museum since the late 1990s has been working to site this project in the two largest structures (Boiler Shop and Erecting Shop) remaining at the former Southern Pacific Railroad Sacramento Shops complex in downtown Sacramento. The Railroad Technology Museum (RTM) will create an urban museum complex contiguous with the Old Sacramento Landmark District, and its location and appeal will help foster surrounding transit-oriented development. The spacious railroad shop buildings will house CSRM’s collection of historic locomotives and railroad cars, with formal museum exhibit galleries interpreting railroad engineering and technology, fundamental physics and engineering principles. Guests will have the opportunity to view ongoing restoration work at the Railroad Technology Museum.

Begun in 1867—as construction of the Transcontinental Railroad was under way—the Southern Pacific Sacramento Shops were, for a time, the West’s largest industrial complex. The facility eventually grew to encompass 240 acres, all of which were reclaimed from the marshy, swampy land just north of downtown Sacramento. For some 80 years, the Sacramento Shops (also known as the "Central Shops" because they were the railroad’s main repair facility) were the Central Valley’s largest employer.

Steam locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, bridges, buildings, and all sorts of smaller items—even engines and machinery for the railroad’s fleet of San Francisco Bay ferryboats—were engineered, manufactured and repaired at the Sacramento Shops. The City of Sacramento’s neighborhoods, its housing stock, and even its public spaces have been influenced by the Southern Pacific Railroad and its thousands of employees. The Shops’ long legacy of industrial innovation came to an end in 1999.

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A lease with Union Pacific allowed the Museum to move its restorations shops into the Boiler Shop, and place locomotives and rolling stock under cover in the Erecting Shop beginning in 2000. A massive transfer table serving the two structures was reconstructed in 2003 at a cost of $500,000. Funding has been allocated for preliminary planning of the RTM and structural stabilization of the two shop structures. As of 2006, Union Pacific Railroad is in final negotiations to transfer the 240-acre Sacramento Downtown Railyard to a developer, which would enable work to begin. Stay tuned!

All Aboard for Old Sacramento
The Museum’s earliest beginnings date from 1937, when it was the "twinkle in the eye" of some forward-thinking people who made up the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society’s Pacific Coast Chapter. Thanks to the foresight of these and other community leaders, CSRM’s first facility opened in 1976 (the reconstructed Central Pacific Railroad Passenger Station) and just five years later, the 100,000 square foot Railroad History Museum opened to much fanfare in conjunction with "Railfair Sacramento 1981," a ten-day event that was the first large historical railroad gathering since the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1948-1949.

The California State Railroad Museum of 2006 is much larger and more successful than ever imagined by the visionaries who first proposed a railroad museum in Sacramento. In 1969, when the decision was made to develop a railroad museum as part of Old Sacramento State Historic Park, the entire concept of Old Sacramento was itself a pioneering one. Instead of tearing down the old to make way for the new, this "urban renewal" project proposed to preserve, upgrade, and reuse 53 historic structures at the heart of the commercial center of the California Gold Rush.

As the Museum begins its fourth decade of service to the public, the future looks bright. A dedicated paid and volunteer staff, a stable State budget situation with current funding to address deferred maintenance priorities, a focused and motivated non-profit fundraising and development effort, and a variety of exciting initiatives under way all bode well for the future of railway heritage preservation at the California State Railroad Museum. All Aboard for Old Sacramento!

	Left: A father and daughter look at part of the toy train collection at the California State Railroad Museum. Perhaps this young lady will become a locomotive engineer or railroad executive as a result of this visit.
	You can learn more about the California State Railroad Museum through their website at www.csrmf.org, or by writing to California State Railroad Museum, 111 "I" Street, Sacramento, California 95814. The Museum front desk is open from 10:00am - 5:00pm (Pacific), M-F, and can be reached at (916) 323-9280. There is also a 24-hour information line, (916) 445-6645.

The Encyclopedia of North American Railroads

The development of the railroad industry did more than stir new ideas and adaptations in technology. Starting from scratch, the business of creating and operating railroads and questions on the relationship of the public and government to the railroads had to be considered. The Encyclopedia of North American Railroads explores railroads as the first really large business enterprises in North America; as such they offered many challenges to conventional business thought. The encyclopedia covers the major challenge of how to structure the management of very large businesses spread out over a large territory. Very frankly, this is material that often causes readers’ eyes to glaze over, but it is vital to understand the business side of railroading and the underlying economics.

Management was faced with the need to understand railway economics, including the huge proportion of fixed costs and the severe problems of finding costs and setting rates. The difficulty of allocating cost and assigning it to given events and units of traffic is covered in several entries.

Before railroads were operating entities there had to be a means of creating railroad companies. Discussions of the charters from the various states that created the railroads are part of the entries. The railroads were the first businesses to make widespread use of the corporate device of limited liability and pooled resources. The encyclopedia also includes material on railroad rates and the ratemaking process of the 19th and 20th centuries. This involves material on the rate bureaus and the rate agreements between the carriers, including rate types and the division of interline revenue. (By the way, rates have always been too high in the eyes of shippers.)

The encyclopedia covers the issue of public policy in a number of historical and in-depth treatments of the economic regulation of the railroads and how it evolved over time. Early on there was recognition of the difference between railroads and other forms of transportation. The need for an operating monopoly of the rail line to insure safety and efficiency rendered obsolete notions associated with turnpikes and canals, in which anyone paying the toll could operate their wagon, coach, or barge. The operating monopoly of a railroad often led to market monopoly and to unhappy customers demanding that government take some action to protect them from unreasonable rates; economic regulation was the result. The encyclopedia relates the whole story of regulation and its evolution, with entries on the Interstate Commerce Commission, U.S. Railway Administration, and Surface Transportation Board, as well as individual regulatory acts of Congress.

In 1889, he dramatically changed careers, leaving the railroad industry to become the in-house railroad expert with Drexel, Morgan & Company, working for the legendary J.P. Morgan. The decade of the 1890’s was a period of tremendous railroad growth requiring massive amounts of capital. As a result, banks were making huge loans without the highly specialized knowledge required to make qualified assessments of the loans’ recipients. Drexel Morgan was at the forefront of railroad loans, so it made good business sense to avail themselves of a qualified person such as Samuel Spencer. According to the New York Times, "there was no man in the country so thoroughly qualified on every detail of a railroad from the cost of a car brake to the estimate for a new terminal as Samuel Spencer."

In 1893, the Morgan firm assumed control over a cluster of struggling railroad companies operating under the name The Richmond & West Point Terminal and Warehouse Company. A Morgan operative by the name of Charles H. Coster drew up a reorganization plan for that company giving it the name The Southern Railway. All of the stock of this new enterprise was held in a trust headed by Morgan, and the trust appointed the Drexel, Morgan resident railroad expert, Samuel Spencer as the new president of the company.

With the solid financial backing from the Morgan bank, Spencer embarked on a rapid rebuilding plan of the weak rail system and over the following decade earnings of the revitalized system tripled. Under Spencer’s administration the system doubled its operated trackage from 4,391 to 9,553 miles and provided employment to over 37,000 people. His enlightened leadership resulted in some interesting developments. He saw the lack of industrialization in the south as a threat to the growth and stability of the Southern Railway, so he began a campaign to encourage the textile manufacturers of the New England states to move their production closer to the source of their primary raw material, southern cotton. By 1900, forty- eight textile mills were alongside the tracks of the Southern Railway. Another large-scale relocation of an industry was furniture manufacturing.

One of Spencer’s first appointments as president was M.V. Richards as Land & Immigration Agent, and the results in the growth and diversification of agricultural products was nothing less than phenomenal. Richards established 25 farm agents scattered about the area, initiated training and publicity publications and operated demonstration trains featuring modern agricultural practices.

Samuel Spencer’s name and legacy became a part of the Southern Railway’s history when, in 1896 an enormous repair shop, terminal and yard complex and village were opened. Early in his presidency, Spencer saw the need for a more conveniently located maintenance facility between Washington, D.C. and Atlanta, and had it established north of Charlotte, NC. As Spencer was a self-effacing man, it is not known how the complex was assigned the name "Spencer," but in August, 1896 Spencer Shops were opened.

By 1900, Spencer had created an efficient rail system throughout the southeast by merging sixty-eight different rail companies into the Southern Railway. He also participated in the selection of equipment, and his ordering of light Pacific locomotives from the Baldwin Locomotive Works heralded the arrival of machines that would become legendary on the Southern Railway.

On Thanksgiving weekend, 1906, the then sixty year-old Spencer departed Washington, DC on a quail hunting expedition to North Carolina. Spencer, and a few of his friends were riding in Spencer’s private railcar which was attached to the rear of Southern’s passenger train, the Jacksonville Limited. It was November 26th. During the night, near Lawyer’s Station, Virginia, approximately 10 miles south of Lynchburg, the train was rear-ended by a following passenger train, 1st 37, the Washington-Southwestern Limited, instantly killing Spencer and most of his companions.

Ironically, Spencer’s 26 year-old son, Henry, a Southern Railway vice-president was onboard a northbound train which arrived at the scene soon after it happened. Henry remained at the scene until his father’s body was recovered from the wreckage and he accompanied it back to Washington.

Soon after Spencer’s death, the employees of the railway initiated a project to more formally memorialize him. A statue by Daniel Chester French was commissioned showing Spencer seated in a chair, with the cost of the project paid for entirely by 30,000 Southern Railway employees. Admirers of Spencer outside of the ranks of the railway asked to participate financially in the project, but their assistance was declined with thanks. The unveiling of the statue took place on the plaza of Atlanta Terminal Station on May 21, 1910. William W. Finley, who had been elected to succeed Spencer as president, presented the statue to the State of Georgia and the City of Atlanta with these words: "Mr. Spencer was essentially an organizer and a builder. His highest ambition was the development of the Southern Railway into an efficient transportation system thus making it a still more important factor in the upbuilding and prosperity of the south. Mr. Spencer constantly devoted the best energies of his creative mind to this goal and we, as his successors, will carry forward the great work he had planned, that this railroad be of inestimable value to the south. That this has been achieved will be the crowning work of his life."

Samuel Spencer was indeed a truly remarkable man.

Bibliography Davis, Burke. The Southern Railway, Road of the Innovators. Chapel Hill, NC: University of N. Carolina Press, 1985 Galloway, Duane and Wrinn, Jim. Southern Railway’s Spencer Shops. Lynchburg, VA: TLC Publishing, 1996 Strouse, Jean. Morgan, American Financier. New York, NY: Random House, 1999 Spencer Biographical Data, Southern Railway Historical Association Archives, Southern Museum of Civil War and Locomotive History, Kennesaw, GA   Left: Samuel Spencer Statue, in front of Atlanta Terminal Station in 1970. The statue is facing the station, and the U.S. Post Office complex is seen behind the statue in this photograph. The base on which the statue sits reads, on the front, Samuel Spencer, 1847- 1906. On the rear of the base are inscribed the words A Georgian, A Confederate Soldier, and The First President of the Southern Railway Company. Erected by the Employees of that Company. SRHA Archives at the Southern Museum

By J . Parker Lamb

By John Gruber

For a station of its influence in railroad photography, the selections are sparse. Perhaps that’s a reason Morgan, then Trains editor, asked me to photograph the station in 1964. "Come with us now as John Gruber explores a structure grand enough to occupy an architect and a train-watcher," Morgan wrote in the introduction to the photo essay with the photos of the nun in the traditional habit walking through the station’s arches.

Southern California Chapter - Preliminary Report on Los Angeles County Fair

For the September meeting, the program featured a digital slide presentation of more than 200 2 1/4" square slides in the chapter collection. Member Clyde Stoneman scanned and digitized the slides on the chapter’s scanner and arranged them in calendar order. The slides were of various excursions that the chapter took between 1956 and 1959. There were also some general rail enthusiast slides taken by the unidentified photographer.