| ||||||||||
 
Dr. Ronald P. Rogers CHIROPRACTOR Support for your body's natural healing capabilities 270-384-5554 Click here for details 
  
Columbia Gas Dept. GAS LEAK or GAS SMELL Contact Numbers 24 hrs/ 365 days 270-384-2006 or 9-1-1 Call before you dig 
Visit ColumbiaMagazine's Directory of Churches Addresses, times, phone numbers and more for churches in Adair County Find Great Stuff in ColumbiaMagazine's Classified Ads Antiques, Help Wanted, Autos, Real Estate, Legal Notices, More... 
|
Rev. Joey N. Welsh. Encore posting: Railroad Palaces ANOTHER ANGLE: the occasional musings of a Kentucky pastor: Palaces for transportation. First posted in CM October 29, 2006 By The Rev. Joey N. Welsh E-mail: joey_n_welsh@hotmail.com PALACES FOR TRANSPORTATION, PALACES OF MEMORY I grew up with a fascination for trains. Grandfather, my father's dad, worked most of his life for the Louisville & Nashville (L&N) Railroad. My father had worked for L&N before he went to General Electric, where he stayed until retirement. One of the first magazines I remember reading was the L&N publication that came regularly in the mail and was filled with pictures of trains, old and new, as well as reminiscences and vignettes of railroad history. Whenever our family drove out Taylorsville Road from Louisville to head toward our relatives in Spencer County, I watched carefully for two reasons. First, the railroad trestle at Pope Lick Road never failed to impress me. In my pre-school years I thought it was surely the most magnificent bridge in the area (other than the George Rogers Clark Bridge over the Ohio River to Indiana, of course). Second, I always hoped that the tracks there running parallel to the road would be carrying a train. If we encountered the train engine, an engineer would often respond by blowing the whistle if I waved out the car window. If we caught up with a caboose, any worker who saw me would wave back at me. When I was five or six years old, that kind of attention from someone on a train was a super thrill for me. In these later years I appreciate trains for more practical reasons. I enjoy flying in and out of Baltimore-Washington International (BWI) Airport, in part because a train station at the airport gives access to commuter trains into Washington, D.C. and to Amtrak trains going up and down the east coast. When I fly there to visit friends near Washington, I often take a train to D. C. Union Station, then board a Metrorail train out to where they live in northern Virginia. Sometimes when I am flying out of BWI, I arrive half a day early, then take light rail from the station at the north end of the BWI terminal, going into Baltimore to see some things and eat before returning to the airport to fly home. If you ever find yourself at BWI with a few extra hours, take the light rail into town and get off at Centre Street. You will be a short walk from the Maryland Historical Society, where you can view the original handwritten poem by Francis Scott Key that is our national anthem. A couple of blocks further is the Walters Art Museum, a beautiful building with a fantastic collection of art from several millennia of human artistic endeavor. During the six years I lived in Washington, the train was my favorite way of traveling to Philadelphia, New York City or Boston. I like the feeling of disembarking from a train and being in the center of things rather than arriving at some airport located an expensive cab ride away from most attractions. An Amtrak trip to Pennsylvania Station in New York allows travelers immediate access to the subways or an escalator up to central Manhattan; this underground station is located beneath Madison Square Garden. (Unfortunately, the impressive and historic above-ground part of the station was demolished years ago -- an act of criminal desecration.) If you travel on to Boston, the Back Bay Station and South Station both are located near famous historic and cultural sites. Around here though, passenger trains are a mostly a memory. There are in our region some palatial reminders of the golden age of train travel.Over 160 references to palaces are found in the Bible, stretching from passages in Genesis on into the New Testament. We will never see those palaces, but in the 19th and early 20th centuries, railroad terminals were built as palaces to serve passengers and celebrate the grandeur of rail transportation. We can see many of those palaces today, though the buildings now serve a variety of purposes. (I still hold a stubborn hope that the old and imposing Owens Hotel in Horse Cave, built to serve rail passengers, will find its own new life in the 21st century.) This week marks 30 years since the last passenger train left Union Station in Louisville; that lovely 1891 railway cathedral of limestone and stained glass lives on as headquarters of TARC, Louisvilles transit authority. The Archives, monthly newsletter of the Louisville Historical League, had a fond appreciation of Union Station in its August issue. The Bowling Green L&N Depot nowadays is site of meeting facilities and some library services as well as a display of antique railway cars. The Nashville station, built in a style similar to Louisvilles facility, has been preserved and renovated as a hotel. The Art Deco station in Cincinnati, with its huge half-dome, houses a complex of museums. The stations in Indianapolis and St. Louis are both part of larger complexes of hotel, restaurant and shopping facilities. And of course, whenever I take the train from BWI to Washington, I arrive at D. C. Union Station, a beautiful renovated terminal on Capitol Hill filled with shops, restaurants and direct links to other transportation in the nations capital. As I said earlier, I always have liked trains, and I know I am not alone in this affection. One of my favorite poets, Emily Dickinson, once wrote of trains as living things, painting a vibrant word picture for the reader. One note: Dickinson uses the word Boanerges in line 13, an expression referring to loud, bellowing preachers or orators. This is the term used in Mark 3:14-17 when Jesus refers to the disciples James and John as "sons of thunder." Dickinson's words are my salute today to memories of train travel and to the palaces that once sheltered passengers in beauty and beckoned them on toexplore the world. I like to see it lap the miles, To see other Another Angle columns, enter "Rev. Joey N. Welsh" in the searchbox. This story was posted on 2008-10-26 07:39:40
Printable: this page is now automatically formatted for printing.
Have comments or corrections for this story? Use our contact form and let us know. More articles from topic News:
Melson Ridge United Baptist Halloween party today Breeding AVFD Chili Supper & Auction Nov. 1, 2008 Sparksville Baptist Church Cookout and Carnival Cute puppy, white with black spots, found on Pelham Branch Rd ADVERTISEMENT Crossroad Flowers & Gifts Bloomington Chapel Fundraiser Sat. , Nov. 15, 2008 Silent City tour Monday, October 27, 2008 at 5:00pmCT Defending KY Champion Marching Indians in BG Regionals Taylor Extension office offers exercise classes, daily Small dog found near fire department, Wednesday afternoon View even more articles in topic News |
 
115 Jamestown St. Columbia, KY. 270-384-2496 
  
   
 Provided by the Adair Co Fiscal Court and the Adair Co. Emergency Mgt. Agency 
|
||||||||
|
| ||||||||||
|
Quick Links to Popular Features
Looking for a story or picture? Try our Photo Archive or our Stories Archive for all the information that's appeared on ColumbiaMagazine.com. | ||||||||||
|
Contact us: Columbia Magazine and columbiamagazine.com are published by Linda Waggener and Pen Waggener, PO Box 906, Columbia, KY 42728. Please use our contact page, or send questions about technical issues with this site to webmaster@columbiamagazine.com. All logos and trademarks used on this site are property of their respective owners. All comments remain the property and responsibility of their posters, all articles and photos remain the property of their creators, and all the rest is copyright 1995-Present by Columbia Magazine. Privacy policy: use of this site requires no sharing of information. Voluntarily shared information may be published and made available to the public on this site and/or stored electronically. Anonymous submissions will be subject to additional verification. Cookies are not required to use our site. However, if you have cookies enabled in your web browser, some of our advertisers may use cookies for interest-based advertising across multiple domains. For more information about third-party advertising, visit the NAI web privacy site.
| ||||||||||
