The Roanoke Times | File 1979

This replica railway depot opened in 1979 at the Roanoke Transportation Museum in Wasena Park. It housed railroad memorabilia, a huge model railroad and a replica train order office. The museum moved downtown after the 1985 flood.

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1998 (10 years ago)

"The Roanoke Rush has decided to suspend play for one year, but plans to return to minor-league football for the 1999 season, playing a schedule at New River Valley high school stadiums."

n"A Northwest Roanoke neighborhood group has secured funding to convert a block filled mostly with empty lots, weeds and trash into nine landscaped apartment houses for low-income families. Construction of Thornhill Place in the Gilmer area is scheduled to start this fall and be completed by December 1999."

"Pedestrians -- shopping, socializing, strolling -- are the key ingredient to revitalizing the Henry Street area, according to planners and residents seeking to convert the largely abandoned section into a bustling downtown jewel."

1983 (25 years ago)

"[Lenny] Dykstra proved the shot that spoiled Salem's second-half Carolina League opener with a bases-loaded homer to propel the [Lynchburg] Mets to a 16-5 victory Wednesday night at Municipal Field."

"Henry Lee Lucas, a drifter and former mental patient who grew up in Blacksburg, Va., claims he has killed 100 women and law enforcement officials are questioning him as a suspect in some of the 'I-35 murders' of young women." Lucas was charged in three homicides in Texas.

"The Roanoke Transportation Museum began as a dream and rusted in reality until citizens stepped in to put it back on track. Down at the heels in the mid-1970s, it has been revived by a coalition of citizens and civic groups and has entered its 20th year in good health."

1958 (50 years ago)

"A Roanoke College alumnus who is a former Salemite, has a butterfly named after him. Dr. Carl Gottschalk ... discovered the butterfly now known as Strymon cecrops gottschalki when he was a high school student in Salem."

"The end of steam railroading has come a step closer. The Norfolk and Western is planning to buy 268 more diesel locomotives."

" 'The Roanoke Guided Missile Platoon' was activated today when its 63 members were sworn into the U.S. Army in Roanoke."

"The Roanoke Dragsters Auto Club will conduct its first races at the half-mile paved runway south of Roanoke which it has leased from the Beasleys. The race strip is on a 234-acre tract which Howard Beasley Sr., orchardist and produce man, and his son, Thomas Howard Beasley Jr., are developing into a recreational center."

1933 (75 years ago)

"The last day of spring undoubtedly set a record of some kind since it was the hottest day of the year and the longest, too, which gave everybody more time than enough to think about it."

"In order to provide relief and additional recreation for employes during the two hottest months of the summer, 67 local retail merchants agreed yesterday to close at five o'clock each afternoon except Saturday during July and August."

"'Home Company Trade Week' will be observed by the colored people of the community July 4, when an effort will be made to attract negroes from a 60-mile radius to the city."

"The first community shower bath for the kiddies will be given Monday, it was announced yesterday. Showers will continue on Mondays and Fridays throughout the remainder of the summer."

"Mountain Lake hotel opened its season this month with two distinguished authors among its guests, James Branch Cabell, of Richmond, and Mrs. Cora Wilson Stewart, of Washington, D.C."

"At the base of towering Sunset mountain, set in the distance like an isosceles triangle, with Poor mountain belying its name and looking richly green from the southeast, 35 youngsters eight to 14 years of age are beginning to have the time of their lives. They are attending the first period of Camp Lucius E. Johnson Y.M.C.A. camp which has become one of the best known in Virginia."

"Barbers will perform their tonsorial operations tonight on picnic sandwiches, etc., and beauticians, likely as not, will massage hot-dogs."

1908 (100 years ago)

"A contract has been closed by the management of the Roanoke Fair Association for bringing to Roanoke during Fair week a flying machine. ... A genuine flying machine has never been seen in this section of the country."

"The southwest section of Roanoke was visited by what seems to have been a genuine cyclone last evening at a few minutes past 7 o'clock. ... Shade trees all over that section of the city were badly damaged."

"The news of Grover Cleveland's death reached Roanoke this morning, and came as a great shock to his many admirers throughout this section of the country."

"A big red automobile arrived in Roanoke yesterday afternoon. ... It came here by way of Lynchburg, but where it started from or who were its occupants, no one ascertained, and they left the city without imparting any information on this subject."

"Hullabaloo, hullabalu, Roanoke, Roanoke takes the two! And the way they did it made that band of Truckers look foolish. There was no loafing on the bases yesterday, no missing of easy balls, no fanning the atmosphere when a hit was needed."

"There is now being constructed at the Mountain Park the most remarkable machine that has ever been seen in Roanoke, and it has been brought here and is being erected strictly through local enterprise. It is an aerial machine, by means of which people of Roanoke will be able to fly whenever they get ready."

"The sight of a new plank walk from the corner of Dale avenue to Jamison, on Eleventh street, is gladdening the hearts of many in this vicinity, who have stumbled and fallen over a miserable excuse of a walk for lo! these many days."