Field trip!

Magnet #635 - NC Transportation Museum

Meet Spencer Shops. At least, that's what we called it growing up in Salisbury, NC. Really, it's called the NC Transportation Museum, dedicated to preserving the history of the Southern Railways and this, one of their largest servicing centers.

Southern placed the center there because it's a good halfway point between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta, GA. It was once the largest employer in the county, and has seen its fair share of ups and downs over the years.

Now it's a transportation museum, where local schoolkids get to visit to learn more about the railway industry, get to sit in a railcar, and even get to ride the superdupercool turntable, where they...turn the railway cars around. So much fun!

My sisters and soon-to-be-BIL to visit during their last trip home to relive my sisters' fond memories of the place. They came back from it, saying it was the coolest thing ever - especially now that it's totally renovated. And now, of course, I want to go back.

That's actually what I'd love to do for a lot of the field trips we did growing up. No, I don't want to repeat that field trip to the funeral home, but there are certain field trips that I'll always remember.

Old Setzer's one - it's this one-room wooden schoolhouse, tucked away back in the woods. And every class got to spend one schoolday in the schoolhouse. The assignment would be for kids to run out to O.O. Rufty's, the old school general store with the creaky wooden floorboards, and buy one of those tin lunchpails, and have our moms cook up some old-fashioned ham biscuits or whatever, and then we'd spend the day at the school, learning lessons on old chalkboards and playing ollie-ollie oxen free over the schoolhouse roof.

So much fun. Although, now that I think about it, that's a lot of trouble to go through for a day of class.