North Carolina Transportation Museum - Spencer Shops, The

Journal of Transport History, The, Mar 2003 by Churella, Albert

The North Carolina Transportation Museum - Spencer Shops P. O. Box 165, Spencer, NC 28159, USA Phone + 1 704 636 2889; Fax + 1 704 639 1881; website www.ci.salisbury.ne.uslnetransl

Most of the hundreds of railroad museums in the United States include collections of equipment in varying stages of disrepair, poorly funded and presided over by a small but determined cadre of volunteers. Only a few, perhaps no more than a dozen, possess the resources necessary to adequately interpret the history of transport technology for an audience that includes the general public as well as enthusiastic rail fans.

Of these, the North Carolina Transportation Museum provides the best interpretation of transport history in the southeastern United States. The museum's mission includes all of the forms of transport that affected North Carolina, ranging from dugout canoes to horse-drawn carriages to such forms of recreational transport as kayaks and NASCAR. This breadth is laudable, as it increases the willingness of the state legislature to appropriate funds and exposes visitors to the pervasive importance of transport in their everyday lives. In practice, however, this is overwhelmingly a railroad museum. Perhaps ninety per cent of the indoor displays and all of the outdoor displays are railroad-related. In addition, the exhibits are housed in the largely intact remnants of the Spencer Shops complex of the Southern Railway. It is this space, both backdrop and artefact, that elevates the facility into the front rank of transport museums.

The Southern Railway established a massive repair facility, named for its president, Samuel Spencer, near the rail junction of Salisbury, North Carolina. The complex included a roundhouse built in 1924, and a massive Back Shop, constructed in 1905, along with dozens of other ancillary structures. Changing traffic patterns and the demise of the steam locomotive led the Southern to end locomotive overhauls in 1960 and close the facility in 1979, ending decades of close association between the shops, the railroad, and the community. The North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources acquired a small portion of the facility in 1977, followed by the bulk of the property, 57 acres in all, two years later.

The community of Spencer (current population 2,800) enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the shops, yet residents were initially reluctant to have a transport museum in their midst (they would have preferred the larger number of jobs associated with light industry). Indeed, the museum has generated very little direct employment in the community, since the State of North Carolina employs only 17 full-time and 5 part-time staff members, while the separate Museum Foundation has 4 full-time and the same number of part-time staff. Likewise, there seems to be a relatively small multiplier effect in Spencer itself, and little indication that the museum's 120,000-130,000 annual visitors linger in the community. Through its Spencer Partnership, the museum has been active in soliciting support from the local newspaper and the Food Lion grocery store chain (headquartered in nearby Salisbury). The Norfolk Southern, the successor to the Southern Railway, provides relatively little financial support. More than 23,000 school children participate in the museum's educational programmes each year, and many teachers integrate their lesson plans and curricula with the exhibitions and programmes. And, predictably, the museum sponsors an annual 'Day out with Thomas [the tank engine]' that draws more visitors than any other event.

Visitors entering the museum drive past a set of entrance gates fabricated from railroad crossing barriers, a telling indicator of the principal focus of this transport museum. The parking lot gives way to an 1898 small-town depot, relocated from nearby Barber Junction, North Carolina. From the depot, train rides provide an excellent way to view the property and give the volunteer narrators their best chance to interpret the museum to a captive audience (Plate 1).

A few hundred yards from the parking lot and depot, the visitor encounters the first building of the original shop complex, the 1911 Master Mechanic's Office. There is little indication of its original function, as the building is largely given over to museum offices, the ubiquitous gift shop, and the first of the three main exhibition areas at the museum. As its name suggests, 'Wagons, Wheels, and Wings' includes a medley of artefacts lacking any clear organizational coherence. An 1895 trap carriage and a Conestoga wagon on a short stretch of plank road bracket a homemade airplane. Across the aisle sits a dugout canoe that abuts a display ('Piedmont Sets the Pace') whose origin can undoubtedly be traced to an orgy of housecleaning by the Piedmont Airlines publicity department. A helicopter engine and a 1922 fire truck round out the exhibition, giving visitors a glimpse of some beautifully maintained artefacts without providing a thematic or chronological overview of the evolution of transport in North Carolina.