SPENCER — Spencer 543 has always been part of the railroad machine, from the birth of Spencer Shops to the back shop’s current incarnation as the North Carolina Transportation Museum. On April 2, they again made that heritage part of their public face by sponsoring their Railroad Degree. After the museum closed, nearly 300 Masons gathered in the 37-bay round house that now serves as a rolling stock and locomotive display for the museum. In the six bays emptied for the lodge’s work, a third degree was performed between a 1913 Baldwin Copperhead steam locomotive on one side and Seaboard and CC&O cabooses on the other. The floor of the lodge took up two bays. The rest was littered with chairs brought by attendees.

Arriving Masons met at the front of the Museum and had hamburgers and hot dogs under the picnic shelters there. They had fun, talked trains and lodges, picked up their pre-ordered tshirts, and waited to make their big entrance to the degree. They boarded passenger cars and toured the yard pulled by a 1958 EMD GP9 which served Norfolk and Western during its working life. After the tour, they stopped at the end of the roundhouse and entered the huge facility. They walked down the row of giant locomotives and other historic rolling stock to the bays cleared for the lodge.

There, on a floor of vertically planted timbers, covered work pits, and rail was a lodge floor with enough of the standard furniture from the lodge to be easily recognizable. A temporary wall with tyler and preparation room doors was installed near the bay doors.

The event was the result of months of planning. Lonnie Melton, Sam Krohn, Anthony Fisher, Woodie Weddington, and John Ogden were the committee to make the Train Degree happen. They started work in January. Master Sam Krohn credited Melton’s hard work and previous experience with the nearby quarry degree with the success they had.

Spencer Lodge’s officers conducted the first section of John Untiedt’s Master Mason Degree. A Rowan County Degree team did the second section. Grand Master Bryant Webster took the part of King Solomon in the second section and Past Grand Lecturer David Potts did the lecture.

If ever there was a community completely intertwining commerce, government, and lodge, it would be Spencer Lodge.

Spencer 543 was part of the community that sprang up around Spencer Shops when Southern Railway built the huge repair shop halfway between Atlanta and Washington, DC. When the Richmond and Danville Railroad went under in 1894, Drexel, Morgan and Company formed Southern Railway to run the track. They put Samuel Spencer, their railroad expert, in charge of the company. He had previously led the Baltimore and Ohio.

Updating the defunct rail required a new back shop, the major repair and maintenance facility required during the steam era. There were no facilities between Atlanta, GA and Washington, DC, and one was needed badly.

John Steele Henderson, a short-term Mason of Dellaplane 355 according to records, served as a secret purchaser for the railroad. He was a Salisbury politician, Confederate war veteran, and Rowan County’s largest landowner. They purchased the property for the back shop and named it Spencer Shops after Samuel Spencer. The Shops opened in 1896. Rather than follow the company town model common at the time, Southern cut up 84 acres into 500 lots which they sold to employees for $100 each. In 1901, the 625 residents of the community were incorporated as the town of Spencer. In 1905, Spencer Lodge 543 began.

It is said that anyone who wanted to work or advance at Spencer Shops needed to join the lodge. To this day, the lodge bears many marks of the railroad including a caboose door which leads to the building’s basement.

The shops employed nearly 3,000 workers through the end of the steam era. Steam was phased out through the 1950s-1970s. After the shops closed in the late ’70s, Southern gave the state the facility for the North Carolina Transportation Museum. The Museum opened in 1983. The lodge has long worked at special events at the museum conducting fundraisers for multiple charities.