Casey Jones Home Gets Makeover

JACKSON, Tenn. - In a 1950 museum picture, 9-year-old Lawrence Taylor can be seen among hundreds gathered in downtown Jackson to celebrate famous railroad engineer Casey Jones. The occasion marked the release of a stamp in honor of Jones, who died in 1900 saving lives during a train wreck.

"I remember my dad giving me a hat and (red) bandanna that day that I've kept forever," Taylor said of the typical work outfit often worn by Jones. Taylor is now director of the Casey Jones Home & Railroad Museum.

Jones' renovated former residence reopened to visitors this month following the opening in June of a new 8,000-square-foot train museum next to the home. Designed as an 1890s train station, the new museum offers more than six times the space for the memorabilia and artifacts once cramped inside the home.

With exhibits moved out of the restored home, it now resembles more of a place someone actually lived in than a museum, said Norma Taylor, who works as the museum and home's historian.

The front area where the exhibits were kept has become a dining room and parlor.

The rooms have been decorated with period-style furniture, from a dining room chest to a wooden dining table and chairs.

"Both rooms had exhibits in them and all over the walls since the museum opened in 1956, so there was major remodeling needed; the windows got new woodwork," Norma Taylor said. "The walls were in bad shape, so Dee and Vic Wallace helped get them repaired and Deborah Laman picked out wall paper that looked like it came from (the early 1900s)."

Because there aren't any actual images, the home's decorations aim to be set up as close as possible to how it likely looked while Jones was alive, Norma Taylor said.

"We have some pictures of how the home looked on the outside, but we don't have any that show (how) it was inside," she said. "Most people didn't take many pictures in the early 1900s, and in fact only three pictures of Casey Jones exist.

"We take pictures all the time, but they didn't have the access to camera and film as easily."

The museum opened in 1956 inside the Chester Street home where Jones last lived before being moved to its present site at the Casey Jones Village off Interstate 40 in 1980. In 2005, the museum and home received a $650,000 grant to help pay for part of the almost $1 million upgrade.

The new museum includes railroad benches, a ticket window and an attached 80-foot railcar filled with a model train exhibit.

Outside sits a replica of the steam engine Jones rode to his death in Mississippi, while inside his story is retold in a new theater.

More space for the museum allows for separate rooms focusing on different aspects of Jones' life and on railroad history. One room, dedicated only to the accident, contains the black hearse used at Jones' funeral, while another room recounts the history of locomotives in Jackson.

Jones' legacy has grown through books, movies, stuffed toys and even a 1958 television show that still airs in New Zealand and Australia.

The accident that killed Jones happened at 3:52 a.m. April 30, 1900, near the community of Vaughan, Miss.

According to the Casey Jones Village Web site, Jones was filling in for a sick engineer on a passenger train running from Memphis to Canton, Miss., and trying to arrive on time despite leaving late. At Vaughan, the tracks were blocked by a train that had failed to move completely onto a siding.

Jones was hailed as a hero because he died trying to stop his train while telling his fireman to jump to safety. Jones was the only one to die in the wreck.

"A lot of engineers were killed in 1900, but what made him famous was the song," Lawrence Taylor said.

Wallace Saunders, an African-American engine wiper who worked at a stop along the route Jones traveled, is believed to have written "The Ballad of Casey Jones" shortly after the accident, according to an article about the song on the Web site for the Casey Jones Railroad Museum State Park in Vaughan, Miss.

Saunders' song later was published by Vaudeville performers, who received the copyright, the Mississippi museum's Web site states.

"It's like the astronauts we have today; (working as a train engineer) was a very dangerous job," Lawrence Taylor said. "Imagine two rails with trains going 100 miles per hour while trying to stay on track. Driving on that took a lot of courage."