ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602270143
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
Published correction ran on February 27, 1996.
Richard Dunlap was the last president of the Norfolk and Western
Railway, not John Fishwick, as a Sunday Extra story reported.
FOR 113 YEARS, the Norfolk Southern work whistle has measured time and toil for Roanokers. For many of us, it's a symbol of stability and our proud working-class roots.
Old Gabriel sits on top of Norfolk Southern's coal-fired powerhouse looking like a devil's pitchfork.
Across from the East End Shops on Campbell Avenue, you can just barely see it on the roof, barely notice the steam billowing from its three bells.
But if you live or work or travel in Roanoke, or anywhere within a 5- to 10-mile radius of the shops, you can hear it.
And sometimes - when the weather, the wind and your mood are in tune with such things - you notice.
When Lloyd ``Red'' Childress hears it blow at 7 a.m. from his bed at the Roanoke Rescue Mission, he knows it's time for the Capitol Restaurant to open, time for him to walk from Southeast to downtown Roanoke for his bacon and eggs.
When Wasena homemaker Kim Morris hears her 4-year-old daughter shout, ``Mommy, I hear the cow mooing!'' she knows it's time to get out of bed.
When 90-year-old Louise Aliff hears the whistle from her Southeast Roanoke home two blocks away from the shops, she thinks of her late husband, Oakey, a railroad blacksmith who wanted his supper fixed exactly one hour after the 3:30 whistle blew.
And when retiree Louise Mann hears Old Gabriel from her Boxley Hills home, she recalls instantly the voice of WDBJ-TV's Irving Sharp coming from her parents' living room on Laconia Avenue. ``First I'd hear the whistle, then I'd hear Irv, and then I knew it was time to get up,'' she recalls.
Mann's father, Richard I. Updike, retired from the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1948. An assistant foreman of the tool room, he was Old Gabriel's custodian throughout the 1910s, '20s and '30s. He crafted the second version of Old Gabriel in 1917 - from a mold he drafted using an Irish potato as his clay.
``It's not as loud as it used to be,'' Mann says. ``But when I'm out in the yard and the wind's just right and there aren't too many cars roaring by, I can still hear it. And I think of my daddy.''
For 113 years, Old Gabriel has called Roanokers to work. One of the city's oldest icons, it is to the ear what the Mill Mountain Star is to the eye - a part of our community consciousness and a symbol of our past.
Old Gabriel has measured time and toil since 1883, a year after the brothel-ridden town of Big Lick became the booming city of Roanoke.
Back then, Norfolk Southern's East End Shops were still the Roanoke Machine Works. A hard rain could turn the city's dirt streets into a muddy bog. And the big issue dividing the city was whether residents should be forced to fence their cows.
In the days before battery-powered watches and telephones, Old Gabriel was Roanoke's Big Ben. A reminder of the stability - and authority - of the railroad, it gave order to a town known for its whorehouses, saloons and the pigs rooting in its streets.
``Let the Shop whistle fail to blow and see what happens!'' boasted a 1934 article in the Norfolk and Western Magazine. ``Two generations, and now a third, have set their clocks and watches by the whistle's tone - have risen by it in the morning, gone to work by its voice, have eaten when the whistle told them it was time ...
``Half a century of exactness has built a reputation which cannot be trifled with.''
Railroads necessitated the creation of standardized time in the United States. To avoid train wrecks, railroadmen synchronized their Hamilton pocket watches daily.
``The work whistle was established as a carry-over to that - to more or less let everyone know when it was starting time and when it was quitting time,'' says Ken Miller, historian for the Roanoke Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.
In the years before telephones, members of the wrecking crew had to live within listening distance of Old Gabriel so they could quickly be called to work. And one story still circulating in the shops has it that an old-timer responsible for sounding the whistle conferred daily with Western Union to make sure his watch was accurate.
After years of talking to the same operator, he finally thought to ask, ``How do you know your clock is accurate?''
The operator's response: ``Why, even the N&W work whistle goes by it.''
Old Gabriel's role now ``is basically to be as noisy as it can be,'' explains the whistle's current caretaker, Mearis Martin. Old-timers still check their watches when it blows, he says, but people don't rely on it like they used to.
``When I first started [in 1970], that whistle was the time standard. If you were a few minutes late blowing it, people would call you up and tell you, `The whistle's off.'''
Martin, 49, is the powerhouse supervisor and an electrical engineer. He listens daily at 7, noon, 12:30 and 3:30 - first for the clunk of the electronic valve that releases steam, then for the blast of the first note, then for the higher pitch, and finally for the deep resonant refrain of its three-pitch chord.
``It takes five seconds to get enough steam up there to it to start blowing, and then it's 13 seconds long,'' he says. ``I always listen for that last note - that's how you can tell if it's working right.
``Every now and then it gives you an extra little toot at the end. That's the valve bouncing back when it closes.'' Though he doesn't say so, he seems to admire the flourish.
``It's got its own mood,'' Martin says. ``You can listen to it two or three times, and it'll never sound the same. The end is always a surprise.''
Martin's boss, Locomotive Shop manager Cal Gamble, isn't as concerned with the details. ``All I care is, it blows at the right time,'' Gamble says.
Recent shoppers at downtown Roanoke's Fret Mill might have wondered what the guys there were doing when they dropped everything to run outside and tune their guitars to the noon whistle.
``It's basically an inverted D-major seventh chord, composed of a D, then a high C sharp and ending with a low F sharp,'' explains Wes Chappell, a Fret Mill clerk and musician who identified Old Gabriel's notes at a reporter's request. ``At the very end it slides down to an A-major chord.''
Asked for his artistic interpretation, Chappell offered: ``It starts out a little hopeful, then it gets a little dissonant, as if it's reminding you of something - like, to get up and go to work.
``It's got hope and despair all in one fell swoop.''
During a recent lunch break in the East End Shops, the analysis was more direct. At exactly 11:58, Bill Moore checked his watch. While men younger than him were already heading to the Kelvinator for their lunch pails, the 58-year-old machinist continued tightening his wrench around part of a locomotive water pump.
He waited for the whistle's cue before he stopped to begin his lunch of mixed greens, tuna-fish salad and a Big K lemon lime. ``I always wait till the whistle blows,'' he said. ``That way you stay out of trouble.''
Moore began working for the railroad when he was 20 days shy of his 18th birthday. He grew up on a tobacco farm near Crewe, then became an apprentice in NW's Crewe roundhouse.
In those days, Roanoke's work whistle wasn't operated by an electronic timer, as it is now. It had its own pulley, connected to a cord, connected to a handle that hangs in Mearis Martin's office today.
Back then the powerhouse not only supplied steam for the whistle and the East End Shops. It also heated the old railroad office buildings, the passenger station, Hotel Roanoke and the smaller yard offices.
Ninety-year-old Velty Wright recalls going to work as a blacksmith hammer operator at the East End Shops ``on the fourth day of May, 19 and 25, making three dollars and four cents a day,'' he recalls. ``When I retired in '65, I was making more an hour than I had been making in a week.''
In the early years the whistle blew six times a day instead of four - signaling 10 minutes before workers were due back on the clock. ``They claimed they saved steam when they stopped blowing it a second time,'' Wright recalls.
Every now and then, when the wind's just right, he can hear the whistle three miles away at his house in Southeast Roanoke County. ``And it's beautiful, it's truly something to think about,'' he says. ``It reminds me of that old craftsmanship when you would take a piece of billet and hammer it down into a main rod for one of the steam engines.
``It was a beautiful craft, and I loved it.''
Neither the shops nor the Transportation Museum keep information on the whistle, past or present. At the East End Shops - a place where the pedestrian crosswalk still reads ``MEN CROSSING'' and workers are still permitted to smoke (except in the offices) - the whistle fades into the background like the smell of grease and the occasional cloud of steam hissing from a machine.
Although the current whistle is generally believed to be Old Gabriel's fourth incarnation, no one knows for sure.
``Around the railroad, when things break, you fix 'em and go on,'' manager Gamble says. ``You don't file a bunch of papers.''
Lois Bettis remembers when she moved to Roanoke in 1948 to set up Roanoke's first Rescue Mission at 111 E. Salem Avenue. ``When we were on the market then and the whistle blew, you'd look out and see everybody stop and look at their watch,'' she said.
Last week in her office on Fourth Street Southeast, just four blocks from the shops, Bettis wasn't sure whether the whistle still existed.
``Do they still have it?'' she asked. ``I guess I don't have time to listen to it any more.''
Ott Goode, the retired Vinton real estate agent whose son David is chairman of Norfolk Southern Corp., says he doesn't notice the whistle, either. ``But my hearing's not good like it used to be.''
Others who remember when Roanoke measured time by the whistle still snap to attention when it blows. Jack Fuller, who has run Fuller Brothers' garage on nearby Campbell Avenue Southeast for 27 years, uses the morning whistle as his cue to switch from paperwork to fixing cars. The afternoon whistle is his deadline for finishing car inspections for customers who work at the shops.
His father, James, worked for the railroad. And Fuller recalls watching his mother spring into action at the sound of the afternoon whistle.
``Mama would start getting supper ready,'' he says. ``We always ate at a quarter after four - because we had to work in the garden and feed the cows after that.''
Until recently, his 99-year-old uncle, T.C. Fuller, would walk the three blocks from his Stewart Avenue home every afternoon and stand outside the shop gates - watching the men work, listening for the whistle.
A retired railroad crane operator, T.C. Fuller moved in with his daughter near Crossroads Mall earlier this winter. ``The first thing he wanted to know was, `Why can't we hear the whistle?''' Florence Furrow recalls. ``I said, `Daddy, we're too far away.' And he didn't like it one bit.''
Railroad-history buffs believe the city could do more to attract tourists by promoting NW's heritage as a world-class builder of steam locomotives. For them, Old Gabriel's three notes represent the whistle calls of the railroad's ``Magnificent Three'' steam engines: the Class-J 611, the Class-A 1218 and the Class-Y 2100 series.
``There are people who think the whistle has negative connotations, that it makes us sound like a mill town,'' says Sam Putney, co-owner of Roanoke Rails hobby shop. ``It's like several years ago when [Roanoker magazine publisher] Richard Wells was on a campaign to disconnect the Mill Mountain Star.
``But that's Roanoke, for heaven's sake! There are so few icons left now to connect us to the past, why throw them away?''
By the time NW merged with Southern Railway to form Norfolk Southern in 1982, Roanoke's movers and shakers had become embarrassed by the city's ``railroad town'' label, railroad historian Ken Miller says.
``It was too blue collar. They wanted to be a banking town or a medical center, and the railroad got its back up.''
That attitude played a role in the headquarters' move to Norfolk, says Miller, who believes the railroad purposely downplays the NW part of its history. When Norfolk Southern canceled its 611 excursion program in 1994, citing interference with its business routes, ``It was a slap in Roanoke's face,'' he says, and another reminder that ``sugar daddy'' has gone.
Old Gabriel may be a throwback to the days when the railroad reigned, but it's a reminder of the railroad's still-considerable presence.
``The power can go to Norfolk, but we've still got the whistle,'' says Virginia Tech communications professor Marshall Fishwick, whose brother Jack was NW's last president. Fishwick remembers waking up to the whistle as a youngster in Southeast Roanoke.
``It had this ethereal quality to it, of the sound disappearing in the distance. Like a shooting star, it came and went.''
Retired railroad assistant vice president Louis Newton sums up the whistle's recent past and present: ``It's just something that's always been taken for granted - kinda like the railroad.''
In 1982, while the new railroad was considering its move to Norfolk, the third version of Old Gabriel disintegrated. Although the shops still had the tools to produce a new whistle, it was cheaper to buy one from a manufacturer in Connecticut.
Few industries purchase steam-powered shift whistles today, according to a spokesman for Edwards Signaling Products in Cheshire, Conn. Most of the company's orders are for electronic sirens or horns designed either as internal factory-shift signals or external emergency warning devices.
Caretaker Martin doubts the railroad would spring $22,000 for a replacement if Old Gabriel were to deteriorate beyond repair. ``Not with things being so tight,'' he says.
When the whistle does fall silent, will anyone be around who remembers it as a symbol of Roanoke's working-class roots?
Two months ago, the brace connecting the steam line to the whistle's tallest piece broke, eliminating the last note ``and making a real yucky sound that didn't carry very far,'' as Martin describes it. It took two weeks to fix the broken piece.
``Used to be, people would holler at us if it didn't go off or if something was wrong with it,'' Martin says. ``But last time not a single person called.''
It's all a little sad, he thinks.
Like the sound of Old Gabriel trailing off in the early morning air.
To hear a recent recording of the Norfolk-Southern work whistle, call InfoLine at 981-0100 in Roanoke or 382-0200 in the New River Valley and enter category 6275.
LENGTH: Long : 275 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Wayne Deel. 1. Old Gabriel blows from on top of theby CNBpowerhouse in Norfolk Southern's East End Shops in Roanoke. ``All I
care is, it blows at the right time,'' says Locomotive Shop Manager
Cal Gamble (above). 2. When the whistle blows at 3:30 p.m. (left),
workers head home at the end of their day. color. 3. With the sound
of the noon whistle, Norfolk Southern workers Orris Flinchum (top
photo, left) and Bill Moore spread their lunch on a work bench for a
30-minute break. 4. Mearis Martin (above), general foreman for the
powerhouse at the railroad, checks the timing device for the work
whistle. 5. Until recently, 99-year-old T.C. Fuller (right), a
retired railroad crane operator, would walk the three blocks from
his Stewart Avenue home every afternoon and stand outside the shop
gates - watching the men work, and listening for the whistle. 6. (no
caption). color. 7. A December 1934 article in Norfolk and Western
Magazine told the story of the original Old Gabriel, a one-note
whistle. This version was relegated to air-raid siren duty during
World War II, when the railroad designed its current three-note
whistle. 7. Photo courtesy Louise Updike Mann. Richard Irvin Updike
Sr. retired from the Norfolk and Western Railway in 1948. An
assistant foreman of NW's tool room, he was the whistle's custodian
throughout the 1910s, '20s and '30s and crafted the second version
of the whistle in 1917. He is on the left in this 1948 picture with
five members of his family also employed by the railroad. Graphic:
Notes on the Noise: Old Gabriel's Index. color. KEYWORDS: INFOLINE