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I am SO bummed - the former Southern Railway depot in my father's hometown of Westminster, South Carolina burned on Tuesday night, January 17. The 1916-vintage structure caught fire around 10:30 p.m. and fire departments from several near-by communities responded to assist the Westminster Volunteer Fire Department in extinguishing the blaze around 2:30 a.m. Although the attic and part of the first floor was gutted, the building still stands and the roof is largely intact. Passenger service ended at Westminster on April 30, 1972 when southbound Southern train number 5, the Piedmont, a mixed consist train, ceased making its conditional stop there at 10:45 p.m. The freight agency in the depot was closed after business on April 1, 1973 and the service provided by mobile agency route S.C.-2 out of Seneca, South Carolina. House track business ended when the house track switch was taken out of service on March 8, 1974. In 1976 the building was placed on the register of National Historic Places. The town rallied from having the building razed in the 1970s and the Chamber of Commerce had their offices in the historic structure, which had witnessed the passage of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral train in 1945, the American Freedom Train in 1976, and President George H. W. Bush's 1992 campaign train. Although the town owns the depot, it sits on land that is still owned by the Norfolk Southern, whom they pay a $600 annual lease. How this might affect rebuilding efforts is, as yet, unknown I met TRAINS editor Jim Wrinn at trackside in Westminster when he was still in high school (both our grandparents lived in Westminster) and the fire at "our" depot is really hard news to swallow.
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