BRANCHVILLE - For the past four years, a unique group of individuals has been meeting during the annual Raylrode Daze Festival.

Beginning in 2004 with only four men, T.C. Brantley, the late R.D. Brown, Carl Butler and Larry Hendricks, this reunion of retired railroad workers has grown to nearly 100 individuals. This past weekend, the group gathered at Branchville Baptist Church to fellowship after the opening parade, just as it has in years past.

"We get together to discuss the past, to share old times and to talk railroad," said Hendricks, a retired conductor who traveled the rails for 41 years on the line between Charleston and Columbia and Charleston and Hamburg, hauling containers.

"There's a lot of history in this room," said Butler, retired train conductor who worked the whole Charleston District of Southern (now Norfolk Southern) Railroad for nearly 40 years. Butler became licensed as an engineer in 1972, but finished out his career with the railroad as a conductor.

"One thing I learned is that when I joined the railroad, it was like a birth into a new family," he said. "I really love this family."

Brantley, now 91 years old, retired in the mid-1980s and resides in Charleston.

Another attendee at the reunion was Richard McNeil of Hanahan. McNeil is a retired mobile agent who contacted all of the railroad company's customers from cement plants in Harleyville to Westvaco in Summerville in order to meet their rail transportation needs. He retired from Norfolk Southern after 42 years of service.

Lee Hodges, who started in 1963 with Southern Railroad, retired after 39 years as a conductor on the Rock Hill to Kershaw line, which is part of the old Charleston District.

Awaiting his retirement in January of 2008, Forrest Britt has served as an engineer for 34 years on the old Carolina Division. He is currently riding the rails on the P28 train from Columbia to Branchville. Britt began with the railroad in November of 1971.

"Raylrode Daze Festivul has gone on as long as it has because of the history of the railroad," said Hendricks' wife, Joe Ann. Joe Ann and Bobbie, Brown's widow, decided to invite other railroad workers to join them for a reunion at the festival each year.

"The retirees, including a member from Wisconsin, chose Branchville because many of them worked this stretch of railroad between Charleston and Columbia," Hendricks said. "They are treated as honored guests and ride on the Cal Smoak Special in the parade."

T&D Correspondent Donna Holman can be reached by e-mail at ladyflyer7@msn.com. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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