Tuscumbia Railway Depot

Tuscumbia Railway Depot. . Built-in 1887, the 5th Street Tuscumbia Railway Depot was constructed by the Memphis and Charleston Railroad to serve the city of Tuscumbia and its surrounding area. From the 1850s until the construction of the new depot, all ticketing and passenger-related activities took place at the Franklin House Hotel on the southeast corner of 5th and Water Streets, while all freight and express packages services took place at the wooden freight house on the north end to the rail yard. The present depot was built to meet increasing traffic demands on the railroad, thus a large station with a dedicated express package office was needed. While the downstairs of the building was used for ticking and express baggage, the upstairs served as division headquarters. After the Memphis and Charleston Railroad was purchased by the Southern Railway, the original mainline was pulled up and the track was re-laid around the town to reach the new railway machine shops at Sheffield. With this Southern Railways built a new depot at the west end of 1st Street and had intentions to tear down the 5th Street Depot. Due to the lack of accessibility to the 1st Street Depot, the City of Tuscumbia sued the Southern Railway. After losing the court case, the city appealed to the State Railroad Commission which allowed the 5th Street Station to be put back into use. A time-consuming arrangement of using the two Tuscumbia Depots and the Sheffield Union Station lasted for nearly twenty years, but this could not last forever and by 1948 the inefficiently of having three depots in a 5 mile area began to burden the increasing modernization of the Southern Railway. The decision to replace the depots was carried out. While the 1st Street Station and Sheffield Union Station were demolished, the 5th Street Station was set aside for the city to use as a senior citizen's center. On July 14, 1948, the last train pulled out of 5th Street Station, thus ending over a century of railroad service to Tuscumbia. The new station was built on Shop Pike and 10th Street in Sheffield and would serve as the Sheffield Railway Depot until the end of passenger service on the Southern Railway. The Sheffield Depot would live on as a restaurant until it was finally demolished after the restaurant closed. The 5th Street Station, which was now the last remaining depot in the Tuscumbia/Sheffield area, would be renovated in the 1990s and became a railway museum in the early 2000s.