Jamaica Plain, Boston, MA. Railroad is the New Haven. This would make a fine little model. Check out the service pit to the left.
The post office and general store in Luckenbach on May 22, 1971 ----- before it became "Luckenbach, Texas." No Waylon, no Willie, no "the boys," just a lonesome outpost a few miles from Fredericksburg. The previous year, a newspaper advertisement offering "town — pop. 3 — for sale" led actor Guich Koock and Hondo Crouch, a rancher and Texas folklorist, to buy Luckenbach for $30,000, partnering with a woman named Kathy Morgan. Hondo's wife, Shatzi, paid for the town, and Guich's wife, Patricia, worked as the bartender and bookkeeper. The women gave their husbands all the glory. Hondo, of course, was a talented promoter. Jerry Jeff Walker recorded "Viva Terlingua!" there in 1973 but it wasn't until 1977 that the place became "Luckenbach, Texas," when the famous song was co-written by Chips Moman and Bobby Emmons who proposed it to Waylon because his "name's in it." At the time of the song's recording, neither the writers nor Waylon had ever been to Luckenbach. In his autobiography, Jennings wrote: "I knew it was a hit song, even though I didn't like it, and still don't."
There was a Tankar located on Fifth Avenue in Huntington during the early 60's. I was just a preschooler in those days but was always fascinated by seeing a tank car nowhere near the railroad--C&O's Huntington shops were just a few blocks away! My memory is of course hazy but it seems the tank car was split so that the attendant, manager, whoever, could walk into the tank car and do whatever (I had no idea in those days). Huntington also had some Gulf stations, IIRC, and Gulf had a sort-of refinery a little north of town. Those who are familiar with the area is that the floodwall more or less became the boundary between Huntington proper, Guyandotte, and whatever the area was called between the floodwall and LeSage, a few miles upriver. This Gulf facility still had rail business as of 1964--I remember our car being stopped at the crossing while some HUGE engines (at least to a little boy) made the ground shake as they switched the facility. We had the chance to get "the cook's tour" of the place, seeing the hoses or whatever to load product into the tank cars. Rail traffic ended by 1969 or so; at least I never saw another tank car on that maybe four-car siding. C&O/B&O did use the siding to store or park MoW units as needed. Gulf did have a concrete loading platform or something in the Ohio River; I seem to recall a lot of river traffic in petro-products in additon to coal in the early to mid '70's All of that is long gone, and even the refinery was converted into a recycling center years ago. I don't know what's happened to it in the last twenty years or so. As far as other gas stations, there were Rich Oil stations here and there (my late uncle managed if not owned one of these), Direct, Lyon, and others. Some of these were located between Huntington and Logan or Hamlin. Dad used to work Man, Logan, West Hamlin and other places and sang the praises of these less-than-national gas stations. Oh yes, on Route 60 there was a "Certified" station--how many of those existed? Hoping these ramblings and musings are helpful to some of you.
There were about six in the Huntington area during those days and all of them were left-hand drive. The owner's manual needed a bit of translation to make sense of some of the Anglicisms (quite!) The car was fun to drive, even though the ignition switch was at the top left of the dash and the manual choke--you had to pull it UP as it was to the left of the dash. But, all good things come to an end. and when the generator gave out, and the transmission bit the dust, it was goodbye, so long, farewell. Dad took care of everything. Still a fun car and easy to learn how to work a standard transmission.
Interesting stuff! My wife and I have this song on our road trip playlist, along with Cash's I’ve Been Everywhere, Steppenwolf's Born To Be Wild, Hendrix's Crosstown Traffic, Willie Nelson's On The Road Again and others.
