© 2024 WKNO FM
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

All Aboard: Central Station Turns 100

The Golden Age of railroad travel may be in the past, but that doesn't mean Central Station is through making history.

Some folks will tell you that the signature sound of Memphis is the blues. Others will say rock and roll, or soul music. But if you really want to know what deep, soulful instrument (or maybe just a note) defines this city more than any other -- well, all you have to do is step outside your house on a quiet night.

The lobby of Central Station when it was a bustling terminal.

  The ever-present train whistle is just the chorus of this song. Less familiar is the clanging bell of the train pulling into the station.

Twice a day, the Amtrak between New Orleans and Chicago arrives in Memphis.

It's all that's left of passenger trains in a county that once had seven stations.

Now there's just one: Central Station. And this year, it's 100 years old.

Memphis railroad historian Bill Strong meets me in the station entrance on South Main, near the corner of G.E. Patterson. We imagine the bustling place this used to be.

"This was the hub of the Illinois Central railroad between Chicago and New Orleans," says Strong. "Next to Chicago, this was the biggest deal."

The station was re-purposed in 1999 as an event space. Apartments now occupy the office building above. But ghosts of the past linger in the form of stairways to nowhere and neon signs for platforms that no longer exist. In the days of segregation, the station had separate waiting areas for whites, blacks and immigrants.

This rail map shows how many tracks once fed into Central Station, which is lower right.

  "There was also a dining room on the corner where people could have regular or elegant meals," Strong says.

The north and southbound tracks through Central Station are among the most storied rails in America. They're the rails of the Great Migration, spurs streaming out of the Mississippi Delta, converging in Memphis and flowing north, to Chicago, carrying everything from cotton to blues music to the body of Emmett Till.

A few years ago, a group of railroad historians and hobbyists chipped in and opened the Memphis Railroad & Trolley Museum in Central Station. The space was provided by the Memphis Area Transit Authority, which runs the station. It's open on weekends. The volunteers will start up the model railroads, let you clang a bell or practice your Morse code.

Michael Jack, a museum director, points out an old timetable from 1960.

A board in Central Station displays the various lines that came through the terminal.

  "Look at how many trains -- the Illinois Central had eight or nine different trains through here," Jack says. "The Frisco had five trains, the Rock Island had two."

Some of the lines seem to jump off the timetable and right into our cultural memory. Like the still-running City of New Orleans, immortalized in the song by Arlo Guthrie. Or "The Rock Island Line," which, according to Johnny Cash, was "a mighty good road" and "the road to ride."

Strong and Jack lead me through a door in the back of the museum. We enter a 700-foot long tunnel once used to transfer baggage to different platforms. In 1914, not having to wheel carts down crowded platforms was an innovation, more like a modern airport.

"This is the area where MATA thought we'd be good in because they really couldn't figure out anything better to do with it," Strong says.

Today the station has two daily visits from Amtrak's City of New Orleans.

  The museum has a plan for this tunnel one day: the world longest model train layout.

Until then, the museum has to cultivate a new generation of train lovers in an age nearly devoid of passenger trains.

Still, the music of the railroads lives on in the Memphis night, on the radio, and here, for a hundred years and counting, at Central Station.

Learn more, and celebrate the 100th Anniversary of Central Station Oct. 3-6, 2014.

Click here for a schedule of events.

Reporting from the gates of Graceland to the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Christopher has covered Memphis news, arts, culture and politics for more than 20 years in print and on the radio. He is currently WKNO's News Director and Senior Producer at the University of Memphis' Institute for Public Service Reporting. Join his conversations about the Memphis arts scene on the WKNO Culture Desk Facebook page.