Last Stop
Railroad buff reflects on how his hobby became a museum
By Meredith Mohr Bullard Banner News

It's just a little ranchstyle house, perched on top of a hill overlooking 25 acres of Texas farmland.

But beyond the long porch and and stately trees, a very tall old man and his dog, there's yesterday's entire railroad world, preserved in 15 vintage railcars.

Just ask B.B. Garrett, owner, former Cotton Belt steward, and now, after 35 years, certified railroad expert, to tell a story or two.

Garrett's original intention was to buy and restore an old railroad car, and move it to Whistle Stop Ranch, a tract of land he purchased with his wife Silva in 1972, to create a weekend getaway.

Garrett then attended a Houston auction of vintage rail cars, sold by the Hofheinz family, who had originally planned on renovating them into hotel-type rooms that would circle the Astrodome.

When he arrived back in Flint, he found he had gotten much more than he had bargained for.

"I started out with the plan to buy one or two cars," Garrett said with a laugh. "But when I got home, somehow I had 15.

"And that's when I decided to go into the used railroad car business."

-- Bullard Banner photos by Lori Mellinger

Perhaps the most memorable event of building his train museum, which he now opens to the public during the Rose Festival and the Azalea Trails, as well as for parties and receptions, was the task of actually moving them to the ranch.

"I had 500 feet of track for a 300 foot train, which I moved on the highway," Garrett said. "It took us eight days to move the entire thing, only 200 feet at a time."

And as could be expected, the sight of a three hundred foot train moving down the highway proved to create lasting memories.

"There was a lady in a red convertible that pulled up beside us, as I was doing the flagging," Garrett said, cracking a smile. "And she said 'what's that?' and I told her 'it's a train.' Then she asked me what it was doing there. I said, a little preoccupied, 'I don't have time to explain right now, ask me later!'"

Despite the work it took to get the trains up to his ranch and in just the right position, his collection has become a wealth of railroad history.

Among his trains is one that he describes as 'loaded with the movie stars', a 1945 Pullman Standard that ran between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Also in his collection is a mail and express car, complete with the original mail slots and a couple of authentic mail bags proudly displayed.

The pride of his museum is a 1948 articulated car.

Stretching 203 feet long, it has swivels at two points in its mid section, allowing it the flexibility to 'bend' around curves, making it the equivalent of three cars in one. It once served as a combination kitchen, diner, and club car, complete with an ornate bar.

Besides that, it's chock full of carefully collected antiques which include refinished wooden benches from the old depot at Justin Texas, and a giant brass bell from an Illinois Central locomotive.

In fact, all of Garrett's trains are full of railroad memorabilia, pictures, antiques, and of course stories.

Preserved at the museum is Gracie Allen's personal menu, an old-fashioned glass fire extinguisher he rescued from the trash, his father's old telegraph key, and an elegant depot clock.

Garrett has also saved countless shelves of old train records and ledgers, most of which were saved when Garrett's fellow railroaders gave him a chance at them before they were thrown out.

Possibly the most interesting part of the museum is coming across something that undoubtedly has a story.

Garrett said that one day a man came to him, asking to see the Pullman luxury train.

"He didn't introduce himself, just came in wanting to see the trains," Garrett said. "When he saw the telephone operator's desk in the corner, he told me that that used to be his old desk, where he'd connect the movies stars to their phone calls across the aisle in the glass telephone booth. He'd come all the way from San Francisco to see it."

After working on the Cotton Belt Railroad for 33 years, Garrett has a few stories of his own, too.

Coming from a railroad family, he began doing odd jobs and running errands for his dad as a kid in Spiro, Okla.

Top, in the refurbished train car that carried many celebrities and wealthy from Los Angeles to San Francisco, sits a cleaned up bar area many enjoyed en route between cities. Top right, Garrett retrieved this signal from a stop where it was about to be thrown away. Garrett's home is full of railroad memorabilia, including his telegraph machine, above, and a telephone, below. On the mail car, slots were built into the walls where workers were able to sort mail by city as the train traveled.

At age 15, he took over for his mother, gaining permission to skip school.

It wasn't until 1938 that he became a steward for the Cotton Belt Railroad.

"We had to serve a meal consisting of meat, three vegetables, dessert and beverage at a raw food cost of no more than ten cents a meal," Garrett said, pulling out a ledger with it all carefully documented. "And we had to keep the cost even lower than that- low enough to squeeze 13 meals out of a dollar, so we could feed the crew."

Garrett recently made a book of letters, pictures, ledgers and documents that he's collected from his lifetime of railroads. He plans to give it to his children and grandchildren so they can appreciate and remember the heritage of a by-gone era.

Lately he's been preparing to sell his trains, for sale now is a Southern Pacific 1950 Pullman sleeper car. Although eventually he'll sell the entire collection, the memories and stories they've provided over the years will stick with him.

But if you ask him exactly how he has acquired such an extensive and interesting collection, he'll probably credit his friends with helping him; friends who have been by his side since his days of riding the rails as a steward.

"I didn't do anything personally to get the trains, I just used my friends," Garrett said. "That's what friends can do for you. Really, it seemed like everything just kind of fell into my lap."