[This feature was published in the August 2004 issue of the Bull Sheet]
Union Stations Across the U.S.
By Beryl Frank
Brinkley, Arkansas
Have you ever heard of the Lick Skillet Railroad?
This was the name of the train station before the town became Brinkley, Arkansas, so named for Robert Campbell Brinkley.
Mr. Brinkley not only saw the name of the town changed from Lick Skillet to Brinkley, but also saw the Civil War come and go and the beginning of great railroad expansion in Arkansas.
This Union Station once served two competing railroad lines: the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; and the Cotton Belt. The original station was designed in the Mediterranean Revival style and featured a red ceramic tile roof and a raised, stepped brick parapet at the gable ends. This is where the 'Roosevelt Special' stopped when Theodore Roosevelt campaigned for President of the U.S.
On May 8, 1909, a cyclone nearly destroyed Brinkley's Union Station. But the town badly needed the station to be rebuilt. By 1911, Brinkley Union Station hosted ten Rock Island passenger trains, four Cotton Belt passenger trains and two Arkansas Midland passenger trains. An average of 500 passengers a day passed through the passenger depot as well as two mixed freight trains daily. Brinkley was a busy railroad town.
In 1916 - four years after the new Union Station was completed - both passenger and freight trains went through Brinkley.
By the end of World War II, the automobile and the airplane took a big bite out of rail travel. Both passenger and freight trains carried fewer people and less goods than they did in the heyday of the railroads.
Brinkley's Union Station was described in 1976 as having very unusual architecture and was a very interesting structure. The station was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on April 6, 1992.
Today, the Brinkley Museum on the outside looks much as it did in years gone by. But the whistle of the trains no longer sings out in the town. Going back in time, the Lick Skillet Railroad is only remembered in the history books. But the town still attracts visitors who come to see where the railroads met in Brinkley, Arkansas.
Brinkley Union Station as it looked from Green Square on the east side.
The west side of the station where the trolley cars discharged their passengers.
.