Greetings all, My name is Tom Mooney and my father Bill Mooney was a member of a Frisco paint gang in the early 1940's. He was a sign painter who left his mark on the depots, crosssing, bridges, trains, or whatever. He met my mother while working on the Roff station. I grew up in Mounds -- one block from the tracks and have watched many a Frisco train pass by -- and played on a few of the box cars while parked on a siding.
My name is Dallas Smith. I recently joined the Mounds Historical Society. I was joking one day that after the museum opens, maybe we could rebuild the depot! This idea has caught on more than I thought. All I can find is one very old photo of the depot. I'd like to find the measurements, photos and blueprints somewhere to help do this someday! I am learning how to write a grant and looking for funding for this project someday in the future. If you have any photos you could scan and send to me, it would be greatly appreciated, or anything else about Mounds, OK. It will all go into the museum for preservation for the next generations to learn about our town! My e-mail is dallas@mrssurefire.com. Thanks
Hi Dallas, I noticed Sandra Barton recently put a picture of the Mounds depot on Facebook. That is probably the same picture you are referring to and is the only one I have ever seen. The only suggestion I would have for dimensions is to look at the Sanborn map. Those are fairly accurate but still will lack the detail you require for getting things exact. I believe there are some on this site. My email is sparkler89@gmail.com or you may message me via facebook.
please see http://condrenrails.com/Frisco/Station Floor Plans/Oklahoma Stations/OK.Mounds2.pdf http://condrenrails.com/Frisco/Station Floor Plans/Oklahoma Stations/OK.Mounds.pdf
Guys, I missed when you joined the forum, but let me offer you a hearty Welcome Aboard! Please share any stories or information you might have and continue to ask questions about anything Frisco you are interested in.
Thanks I joined a few years back and then was inactive for awhile. Just to reintroduce myself, my father was a sign painter and worked on the Frisco paint gang in the early 40's. He met my mother in Roff where she taught school. He quit his job on the railroad but always had good memories of his days there. Incidentally, for the first 28 years of my life I lived about 300 feet from the Frisco tracks in Mounds and developed my own love of that line. Each summer the Frisco would park various cars on a siding there. My dad made it very clear to me that I was not to play near the tracks and definitely not be climbing on those cars. You can probably guess how well that rule got followed and we had a lot of fun breaking that rule. At one point in ghe late 50's the Mounds lake dried up. All of us in town had to haul water, but the Frisco had a section house in Mounds and took care of their own by parking a tank car of water for him. He was a black man and when thee section house was closed in the early 60's he moved into Mounds as its first black resident. Never mind the fact he had lived in that house since 1926, you would have thought the world ended when he moved one block into town.
I'll echo Keith's thoughts, guys. My apologies for not being around the depot platform when your train arrived, so to speak. Tom, my Dad has some of the old Frisco wall-sized calendars in his garage that he picked up from someone on the River Division. He was puzzled by the black paint smeared all over them and what he thought were giant holes in them, until he realized the holes were actually giant "F R I S C O" letters. It didn't take long to connect the dots and conclude they'd belonged to a paint gang somewhere. I'll have to see if he still has them and re-remember what the years were on the calendars. Best Regards,
