Shreveport Railroad Museum’s New Exhibit

“All aboard!” That was the conductor’s call heard at Union Station in downtown Shreveport during the early and mid-1960s.

Before there were Interstates 20 and 49, and before airplane travel took off, people visited family or went on business trips by train. As many as 24 trains a day were either leaving, arriving or passing through town.

“The geographical location of Shreveport — East, West, North, South — it was just like it is now — a good distribution point,” said Dave Bland, curator at the Shreveport Railroad Museum. “It was a good place for things to come together. The railroad built tracks that came together here in Shreveport because it was such a good location geographically for distribution.”

Soon, you will be able to relive that special time in Shreveport’s history. A new model railroad exhibit is expected to open just after Thanksgiving, inside the museum at 142 North Common St. The 12-foot-by-8-foot display will have two tracks, with a passenger train and a freight train running opposite directions.

But that’s not all. Making the exhibit look realistic will be downtown landmarks from the ‘60s.

“We’ve got a Sears building,” Bland said. “We’ve got a Stan’s Record Shop. We’ve got First United Methodist Church. We’ve got the Jefferson Hotel. We’ve got Union Station, which was on Louisiana Avenue, which was in use until the last passenger train came through in 1969.”

Bland says passenger train service began in 1897. But it was nostalgia that led modelers to replicate the 1960s.

“Most of us have fond memories of the 1960s,” Bland said. “Going downtown, going to Stan’s Record Shop, going to the Joy Theatre — just remembering downtown Shreveport in the 1960s.”

Back in the day, traveling by train was special.

“It was really a treat,” Bland said. “You would meet a lot of people on the train. The big event was eating dinner on the train. Dining in the dining car was really a formal occasion. People would put on ties and coats and dresses and have real fine meals there.”

The museum has china and silverware which were used in a dining car.

“You could rent a berth and spend the night on a train,” Bland said. “You could go to sleep with the clickety-clack of the wheels and wake up with a good breakfast close to grandma’s house.”

But all good things must come to an end. The last passenger train left Shreveport on Nov. 2, 1969.

When the interstate highway system was built, people drove their cars instead of riding the train.

“As the interstates began to blossom, people going from here to Dallas said, ‘I can get in my car and be there in three hours, and have a car to tool around in,’” Bland said, “as compared to riding a train, which would take about the same length of time, but you wouldn’t have any transportation when you got there. People valued the freedom to travel on their own schedule.”

Interestingly, just two days after the last train pulled out of town, Union Station caught fire.

“The source was unknown,” Bland said. “But it was thought that mattresses and papers were stored in the basement, and maybe somebody accidentally set a fire there.”

The Shreveport Railroad Museum was started in 2013 by the Red River Valley Historical Society. The 60-member group had collected photographs, artifacts, lanterns and switches and wanted a place to display their memorabilia.

“Either (the members) worked for the railroad, or someone in their family worked for the railroad, or they just have nostalgic ideas about the railroad,” Bland explained. “Most of them are railroad photographers. They will go out and stand by the track until a train comes by and takes pictures. They like history — most of them are history buffs.”

Bland himself grew up in a railroad family. His father, Davis D. Bland Jr., worked 42 years as a machinist for the Texas and Pacific Railway in Shreveport.

“He worked on steam engines,” Bland remembered. “In those days, you had to build parts for locomotives because they were all a little bit unique. You had machinists, boilermakers, pipefitters — all kinds of trades that it took to keep a steam engine going. That’s one of the reasons diesels took over. They were much less maintenance-heavy. You could actually go in the storeroom and get a part for a diesel locomotive, where you couldn’t with a steam engine.”

And Bland, the son, has a special memory of Bland, the father, working for the railroad.

“My dad would take me and my sister and a friend or two out to the Hollywood Yards, which was a roundhouse railroad facility at Hollywood Avenue and Jewella, on New Year’s Eve, and let us blow the whistle at 12 o’clock,” Bland said. “We thought that was really neat.”

If you want to take a “really neat” trip down Shreveport railroad memory lane, admission to the museum is free. To learn more, you may visit Facebook and search for “Shreveport Railroad Museum.”