The city of Cornelia has planned a big celebration in honor of Buck Snyder, the force behind the renovation of the town’s historic train depot. In 1988, the depot was scheduled to be demolished because of liability issues for the city. Buck couldn’t let that happen, and as the saying goes, the rest is history.
Restoring Cornelia’s train depot
Buck’s father, Ernest Snyder Jr., was a conductor on a freight line for the Southern Railway. Although Buck’s career didn’t follow his father’s, he has a passion for trains and history. In 1988, when he found out the train depot was going to be demolished, Buck offered to find the donations and the people to return the depot to its former glory.
Working with three or four friends at a time, the depot renovation took about four years to complete. “We worked one or two days a week every week,” Buck shares. The renovated depot opened in 1993. Buck says, “It actually took much longer though to get the depot great.” He gives credit to the support provided by the city of Cornelia for being able to make the depot what it is today. Cornelia has received several municipal grants that provided the cement and brickwork done around the depot, the tile roof on the back, and the beautiful landscaping around the building.
For the depot renovation, Buck raised the funds and recruited workers. “It didn’t take that much money to do the renovation work,” Buck explains, “because we did all the labor ourselves.” Plus, Buck says raising money in 1989 was a little easier than today. “All the businesses in Cornelia and even in the county had set aside money for community projects,” Buck shares. The money was there when it was needed.
Buck’s personal connection to the depot
For Buck, the work on the depot was about more than just renovating the building. The reconstruction work allowed Buck special time with his father.
For fifteen years, Buck worked as an air traffic controller at the Atlanta airport. In 1981, air controllers nationally went on strike. As the strike continued, shutting down national airports for months, a federal court injunction ordered the air controllers to return to work. They refused and were all fired by the Reagan administration.
Buck returned to Northeast Georgia and spent the next 28 years employed at a local bank. It was during this time that the depot renovation was completed. It took 33 years to get it past “being useable” to “finished.”
Buck says he has no regret about anything that happened in his career because things end up the way they should. “My father had dementia,” Buck shares, “and his mind deteriorated fairly rapidly. But he loved coming to watch us repair the depot and being out of the house, sitting and talking with the guys. That time with my dad was special.”
Peter Madruga, president of Habersham Education and Research, works with Buck on an ongoing basis. He admires Buck for his dedicated work of over 30 years to the town of Cornelia and the depot.
“Buck is driven in providing protection and betterment for the deport and the town of Cornelia,” Madruga explains. “And, he’s always available, except on Wednesday and Friday evenings. That’s when he has a long-standing dinner date with his wife, and nothing is more important to him than that.”
According to Madruga, Buck’s passion for the depot and the trains runs deep. “You know how his face is pretty serious looking all the time,” Madruga asked. “We did a photo shoot for the movie we’ve produced, and Buck’s face lit up when he climbed aboard one of the cabooses. He has a deep love for trains.”
That movie, a documentary Madruga produced called Cornelia: A Train Town, will provide the backdrop for an upcoming celebration this weekend honoring Buck Snyder for his devotion and hard work in preserving this important piece of Cornelia’s history.
The depot’s future
Buck serves as president of the Depot Association, a 501c(3) organization. The association continues to receive donations of items, newspaper clippings, and artwork for the depot’s museum. “I get calls all the time,” he says, “people calling to tell me they left something for me at my door or somewhere at the depot.” One of those items was the metal framework for a huge station trolley cart that had to be rebuilt because the wood was so rotted. That trolley can be seen in the museum today.
Another interesting gift was a track car with a hit-and-miss engine. The hit-and-miss engine would fire up automatically when a track car’s speed decreased to a certain speed, and it would cut off automatically when the speed increased to a certain point. The track car has been completely renovated. It was sandblasted and painted bright yellow. It is also in the museum.
One of the really impressive things to see in the museum is the control board used in the Norfolk Southern Railroad Dispatcher’s Office in South Carolina. When Buck found out the control board was available, he aggressively went after it. It took a moving company to take the board apart and move it to Cornelia. It then took a lot of work to set up the board, but it is an amazing artifact of an earlier time of train transportation.
When asked what Buck’s dreams for the depot are, he replied, “I want this work to continue on after I’m gone. I’m looking for someone younger to take over from me and carry on.” The job will require someone with a passion for the depot and its history who can help raise funding for it. “We are always in need of funds,” Buck explains. “We have to paint the building every 4-5 years. We’ve just built the roof over the caboose and renovated the car both inside and out. We’ve been really blessed by private donations for some of that work. But the needs for renovation and upkeep continue.”
Saturday’s celebration of Buck Snyder Day
On Saturday, July 23rd, Cornelia invites the community to celebrate Buck and the impact he’s had on the city through his devoted preservation of the depot and the town’s storied train history.
Buck Snyder Day runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and will include a ceremony honoring him. The train depot, the museum, and the two renovated cabooses will be open free of charge to the community. Cornelia: A Train Town will be shown continually in the depot as well. Kona Ice will also be there, passing out free shaved ice cups.
