(continued)

These impediments, along with the continuing complaints from people of Weldon, and the desire to have their own access to crossing the river and the town. helped the newly formed (1900) Atlantic Coast Line decide to build their own bridge.

Several years after the railroads were consolidated into the Seaboard Air Line and the Atlantic Coast Line in 1900. the ACL decided to demolish their hotel and the buildings around it and started grading and building piers for their new bridge. With this decision also came the need for a ticket office and station facility for their customers.

With the SAL also in need of improved facilities. an agreement was reached to construct a joint ACL and SAL facility. This joint station would become the Weldon Union Station. finished in 1912. The lower section of the Union Station was designed and constructed by the SAL. The building was constructed of yellow brick with brown painted trim work and a terra cotta tile roof. It housed the ticket offices for both railroads in the middle of the building. with a large waiting room on either side. Since the building was built during the years of segregation. one room on the north side of the building was the white waiting room and the other side was the "colored" waiting room.

Each of the waiting rooms had two large restrooms for male and female patrons. The south side of the building had a large baggage and mail handling area and would hold 15 large mail wagons (four wheel). five wide and three deep. There was a large door at each end for access to the elevator to go upstairs for the ACL. and out the other side to the Seaboard sheds. This baggage room was constructed on a concrete slab. which was also the ceiling for the boiler room and coal storage room. The area above the baggage handling area was used for access to the ceiling of the main building and for record storage.

Built as a joint facility, the two railroads each maintained the structure on a two year rotating basis in which the all expenses were paid by that railroad during its turn. Ticket revenue of each railroad was forwarded to their respective banks by way of the Railway Express Agency. The Atlantic Coast Line built an extensive elevated structure- two waiting rooms, as well as platforms to support the handling of passengers, mail and express. There was also a freight elevator for transferring primarily mail. express traffic and baggage, but also some of the tall four wheel carts known around the railroad as "Hearse" (*see Rail Mail) carts. Weldon was for years a transfer location for bodies from the U. S. Navy in Norfolk, traveling by rail to Charleston, S. C. The original elevator was built right at the end of the building on the north end of the upper waiting rooms. This was found to be inadequate and a larger one was built, some time before 1932, between the southern end of the upper waiting rooms and First Street. The upper shed and waiting rooms, along with the main building and the lower sheds made quite an impressive sight.

In the late 1950's, the Seaboard decided to close their freight office and move the work into the ticket office, with a single agent. This was done easily since the ticket office had telegraphy and phone works in place for both the SAL and the ACL, and Weldon no longer required a permanent yard switcher on site. This work was done by the upper yard switcher at Roanoke Junction, in Roanoke Rapids. To compensate the ACL for this service, the night ticket clerk did the ACL freight reports. As passenger business declined and the mail contracts were canceled, the sheds and building became expendable and fell into disrepair.

In February 1968, Seaboard Coast Line (formed by merger of the ACL and SAL in 1967) discontinued the TIdewater, #17 & 18 to Norfolk and with the advent of Amtrak in 1971. all passenger trains ended their regular scheduled stops at Weldon. Also in 1968, SCL removed several spans of the Seaboard bridge over the main channel of the Roanoke River. At the same time, they made a connection on the north bank of the river from the Seaboard main line to the main line of the Coast Line. On the Weldon side of the River, a small radius "dog-bone" loop was constructed. This was supposed to allow trains arriving from Roanoke Rapids to gain access to the connection. This loop proved to be an operational headache, because after trying several times. the SCL found it could not push cars into the loop, but had to pull all cars through it. This necessitated having the yard switcher in Roanoke Rapids stop its work and come to Weldon to pull mainline trains (mostly Amtrak), which were normally detoured when either the SAL or ACL main was blocked.

In 1976, the then Mayor of Weldon, Sam Oakley, who was the Seaboard Coast Line's Signal Maintainer, made arrangements for the main terminal building of Union Station to be given to the Town of Weldon. In exchange, the town agreed to remove all the upper structure platforms, stairs, wailing rooms and sheds, along with their supports. While the Union Station building today is standing, it is being used as a library. A group, the Weldon Railroad Museum, Inc., would like to take the site back and restore the building to its original appearance.

In 1983, The Seaboard System (successor to SCL) severed the Norlina to Roanoke Rapids section of the Portsmouth Sub-division, and the detour movements stopped. The Roanoke Rapids switcher still comes to Weldon, through the loop, and picks up cars destined for the paper mill. The viaduct remains in use by CSX, serving a modest amount of daily freight traffic. This includes piggyback trains, general freight and an auto rack train from Norfolk to Atlanta, usually two times per week. The Tropicana juice train passes daily. as do unit sulfur and coal trains.

Passenger traffic includes the daily Amtrak Silver Meteor. Silver Star. Silver Palm, Auto Train and Carolinian, both north and southbound; unfortunately, none of them stop at this once grand facility

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