Historic Birmingham Mineral Railroad Signs Project — The BMRR Past and Present!
General Historic Photographs
Included below are a few examples of historic photographs of the Birmingham Mineral Railroad.
NOTE: Generally, clicking on an image will enlarge it for better viewing.
Top photograph below is view of BMRR crossing over Old Montgomery Highway looking south toward Homewood in 1915. Note streetcar tracks on right side of dirt street.
The series of images and graphics shown in the pdf file below are presented here courtesy of www.bhamrails.info. This is the street going over Red Mountain below present-day Vulcan Park, and these images show that the street originally was ABOVE the BMRR tracks with a road bridge over the tracks. The street subsequently was lowered for streetcar clearance which then put the street BELOW the BMRR necessitating a BMRR trestle.
The first BMRR sign was installed across the street from the site of the former L&N Woodlawn Depot. The following photograph and information is from the Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum website:
Woodlawn Depot
The oldest known photograph of the Woodlawn Depot taken July 14th, 1947. The building now housed a Paint, Roofing & Supply Co.
The Woodlawn Depot, built in 1904, was originally located at 6501 1st Avenue South, in Woodlawn, a community in the city of Birmingham, Alabama. The 1916 Birmingham city directory listed the location’s name as the East Lake Freight Station. Later, in the 1925 directory, it was simply called the L&N Freight Depot.
Records show that by 1947, the station had been converted to a Paint, Roofing and Supply Company. The photo shown of the building is the only known image from that time period.
It is now home to the Boone Library after having been moved from the Woodlawn community.
ADDITIONAL WOODLAWN DEPOT INFORMATION:
The following is a photograph taken by Lyle Key in 1996 before the depot was moved and restored. As he indicates, this building may be the last surviving building from the Red Mountain route of the Birmingham Mineral Railroad.
The following is a the restored Woodlawn Depot as it appears today at the Heart of Dixie Railroad Museum in Calera, Alabama, where it houses their archives and the Boone Library.