Project gives new life to historic train depot
Restoration of the Norge station should be completed within two years, the contractor says.
By SAM CORRIE
247-7840
December 12, 2008
Time has touched this building. Its faded gray heart-pine siding and musty smell speak of age.
But with age comes history, and the history of the old Norge train depot was nearly wiped out. Rotting away dangerously close to the tracks, the depot was set to be demolished.
After a 16-year campaign to raise grant money and community awareness, the depot was moved to its current location adjacent to the James City County Library.
Instead of being demolished as was once planned, it is being restored. Mike Hipple, the general contractor in charge of the renovation, said the project should be completed within two years.
“It’s for the community and the citizens. It’s where I live, and I believe in being a good corporate citizen,” said Hipple, whose company has donated in his estimate around $100,000 in materials.
Fond memories
The story of the Norge train depot in many respects is the story of Norge itself. Before the depot was built, sometime between 1906 and 1908, what is now Norge was just the land between Toano and Williamsburg.
Nancy Bradshaw, co-author of “Velkommen Til Norge: A Pictoral History of Norge,” said a railroad entrepreneur named Carl M. Berg fell in love with the area and wanted to share it with his fellow Scandinavians in the Midwest.
Berg published large ads in newspapers and trade publications enticing people with word of available farm lands and a good community to raise children in. Berg’s idea worked, and the town of Norge was established in 1904.
In fact, so many people of Norwegian descent relocated that the town took the Norwegian word for Norway as its name.
Sometime between 1906 and 1908, the Viden’s Siding train depot was built on Peach Street along existing tracks. It would eventually come to be called the Norge train depot.
According to the Virginia Historical Register’s record, written by Meg Malvasi at the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research, the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway Co. (now CSX) constructed the small combination station mainly so local farmers could ship produce.
The farm goods would be shipped, mostly to markets in Richmond, in barrels made in a nearby barrel factory. Before then, the closest depot was two miles away in Toano.
The depot itself is a one-story wood balloon-frame building. It’s called this because only nails hold balloon frames together, and carpenters at the time thought they would just blow away, like balloons. But resting on a foundation of brick piers and a sturdy wood truss system, the depot has stood for more than a century.
The depot, as detailed in Malvasi’s report, is an “excellent example of early 20th century standardized architecture used by the railroads, and the last surviving building of its type in James City County. Although mass-produced, the building was both sturdy and stylish.”
Much of the design was driven by the rail boom sweeping America at the turn of the century. Like Ford Motor Co.’s assembly line cars, the idea was to have a basic design that could be built quickly and efficiently. Then the customer could customize the car, or in this case the train depot.
Gathering point
The Norge depot hasn’t just been wood and nails to the people of Norge, though. It was a community gathering point.
Nancy Bradshaw, whose family moved into a house less than 100 feet away from the depot in 1933, grew up with the depot in her backyard and remembers it fondly.
“As a young girl of 10, I found this an interesting place. I spent many hours sitting on our back gate, watching the trains go by, counting the cars or singing out the names of the railroad lines the cars represented. But what fascinated me most was the depot,” she said.
An important fixture at any train station during those times was the station agent, who ran the depot by coordinating the trains’ departures and arrivals. To many communities, these men were the link to the world at large. Agents got your telegrams, mail and family in for holidays.
Bradshaw had her favorite station agent, C.L. Showalter. Showalter was affectionately referred to as “Hops” because of the way his wooden leg forced him to bounce around.
“Who could resist his office,” Bradshaw remembers, “with all the machinery to keep the trains on the right track and the constant ticking of the telegraph system. The room was always warm in the wintertime, for it was heated by a big potbellied stove which burned coal like that carried by many of the trains.
When a train was approaching, Showalter would pull huge levers that would make sure the train was on the right track. Just above these levers was a lighted chart that showed where the train was in relation to the depot.”
Another fond memory of the depot for Bradshaw was the time she and Showalter’s five daughters spent in the garden on the east side of the depot.
“On a little hillock, the section foreman, Mr. Dan Matheny, kept an immaculate spot with flowers and neatly mowed grass,” she said.
The scents of cannas and forsythia seem to fill her mind with kind, soft memories of her childhood.
During the Depression, Bradshaw remembers passing out sandwiches her mother made to the sad souls who would get off the train on their way to look for work in Newport News or Toano.
Bradshaw still lives in that house with her husband, just behind where the depot used to be. Together they raised seven children, who have their own indelible memories of the depot.
The station ceased regular passenger service in 1969 and was converted to a storage facility.
Life as it was
Luckily for her grandchildren and possibly their children, the old Norge train depot will move peacefully into the future.
Future generations of Virginians from Norge and abroad will be able to see this beautiful whistle-stop in history because it teaches us not just about trains but about life as it was.
“Memoirs of Old Norge Station,” a poem by Henry W. Marston a former station agent at Norge, says it best:
“I am an old railroad station, that was built long ago; I’ll tell you now a few little things, I think you might like to know.”
I just happened to be able to get a picture of the depot’s restoration in progress to share with you!
