Staff photo by Robert Johnson James E. McCanless, who used to keep the clocks on time Union Station, has in his living room this Master Clock that kept trains on schedule for years. Alligators Remembered By LOUISE DAVIS THE QUESTION is settled, were beyond indeed any doubt: there two alligator pools at the front of Union Station. After the Magazine story of March 16 ("Alligators and Clocks"), raised the question of whether there were two alligator pools or one, readers were quick with the answers. Most authoritative reply came from James Geddes Stahlman, former publisher of The Nashville Banner. He not only remembered playing around the two pools when he was a child. He knew exactly where the alligators came from. "My grandfather, Maj. James Geddes, was superintendent of one division of the L. & N. at the time the Union Station was built," Stahlman said. "His office was on the none northwest corner of Union Station, on third floor. I used to play around there when I was a boy.' Major Geddes would go to St. Petersburg, Fla., for six weeks every winter and he would bring back baby alligators for Stahlman and his sister Mary (now Mrs. Byrd Douglas) to play with. "Mary and I kept them in warm ashes by the fireplace to keep them warm," Stahlman said, "but a cold spell came one year and they died." A BOUT promoter THAT and TIME, railroad the official sharp responsible for much of the design of Union Station, Maj. Eugene Lewis, had an idea for entertaining travelers at Union Station. He would build two alligator pools one on each side of the front entrance, at track level. "It was showmanship," Stahlman said. "He put the alligators there just as a curiosity. McCanless, left, with friends who helped broadcast the whistle of the Pan-Am as the train rushed by the Vine Hall tower every afternoon. "There were two pools all right. Major Lewis, with his ideas of symmetry, wouldn't have had it other- "*And Grandfather Geddes furnished the alligators. He would bring them back with him from Florida. used to play around there and watch them.' Mrs. Jimmie Fulghum, whose grandfather was a cabinet maker and Pullmancar inspector for the railroad for 50 years, has vivid memories of the two alligator pools. "I was scared of them," she said, "but I liked to go down and watch them." Her father, Will R. McGonnigal, was an engineer with the railroad for years, and she had two sisters who worked in offices at Union Station. "Grandfather's house was at 1217 McGavock Street and is still standing," she said. "It was an easy walk down to Union Station to see the alligators in the two pools.' AND had JAMES worked E. for the McCANLESS, railroad who for 50 years when he retired in 1963, remembers precisely where the two alligator pools were under the concrete blocks where small tool shops stand at track level now. McCanless had just stepped inside one of those tool shops the stormy day. in 1953 when "Old Mercury" fell from the top of the tower and crashed at the spot where McCanless had stood moments before. "It was right outside the door of our shop," McCanless said. "Right beside where the alligators used to be. The places where the alligator pools were are now concrete slabs, with the shops built on them." After "Old Mercury" fell, McCanless ran a wire up through the pipe that had supported the metal statue of the Greek god and antenna there for radio communication- for a bay station, he said.. Part of McCanless' job was to maintain the clocks at Union Station, both inside and out. He still has some of the old parts of the clocks that used to show the time high on the four sides of the Union Station tower. "That old clock worked by pendulum and weights," he said. "It controlled the other clocks to the tower." The clock tower ended in World War I, McCanless said, because they could not replace the worn canvas belts that kept the clock parts turning. "That canvas was made in France," he said. "It was some kind of linen that we couldn't get anywhere else. The old ones got raggedy. They wore out. We couldn't use them any more. Mr. Waldrop said, 'Take them out of service.' So we did. "He had bridge men dismantle the tower clock and store it in a shed across the tracks, near 11th Avenue. The piece of metal I hold in my hand was the escape wheel to operate the second hand.' M CANLESS, near WHO Bowling KNOWS Green the where the stone was quarried for Union Station, loves the building to the last rail and window. He treasures the relics of its clocks like members of his family. Hanging on a wall in his living room on Rosebank Avenue in East Nashville is the old Seth Thomas clock that used to keep time for the whole N.C.&St.L. line. It was McCanless' job to set the clock every day at 10 a.m. "We got the time by Western Union from the Navy Observatory in Washington every morning," McCanless said. "If this clock was off two sec- onds, we would regulate it. And we would put that time out over the entire system." Every railroad man set his watch by that time. Every station set its clock by that time. "This clock used to hang in a third floor office at Union Station, in Room 301, on the west side of the station," McCanless said. "It was master clock for all the trains. "It is weight-operated and has sixand-three- quarter inch movements. The railroad quit using it about 1945. In another room, McCanless has a smaller wall clock- one that used to hang in the Bowling Green depot, where he began his railroad work. "I got it from the attic of the old depot there before they tore it down,' he said. Among the mementoes of the world of time are photographs of equipment used years ago in broadcasting the whistle of the old Pan American passenger train -the pride of the railroad- as it passed the Vine Hill "I installed the equipment for broadcasting that whistle," McCanless said. "Later we moved it to the brick tower near Melrose Shopping Center, where our tracks crossed the Tennessee Central tracks." At 4:30 p.m., McCanless or another operator would lean out the window of the tower, holding the microphone above the steaming locomotive as it whistled by. Children and grown ups for hundreds of miles would thrill at that sound of distant travel. "We had a direct line to the WSM studio," McCanless said. "See those pictures? They were made the last time the Pan Am ran. "I could tell you lots of things about the people that kept all of that running."
