Let's take a quick look at what could eventually happen to the roundhouse, and its economic viability to the City of Frankfort. If the roundhouse is eventually torn down, the land will be vacant with little chance of its reuse. If the building is used for another purpose (as an office building perhaps or as a storage building), it will remain on the tax rolls and employ a certain number of people. If it becomes a museum, it would attract visitors which would possibly help the local economy. It might employ a certain number of people and/or have volunteer help. It could be possibly receive grants as an historic place.

The City of Frankfort has to decide which would be the best way to go.

Les

It all boils down to whether we are really interested in saving history where it happened or just playing train. As I see it, investing money and time into phoney baloney sites is a wasted effort. There is no real history there, and who is to say that when the big boys playing with the big toys are too old to maintain them anymore that the museum won't be evicted for a better use of the land?

We live in a very mobile society today and if something is worth visiting, people will come. Durango, Colorado is pretty hard to get to, but they still come. Frankfort and Durango are two different places, but Frankfort could be a prime Indiana attraction if authentically developed, and not just a place to park assorted and unrelated railroad junk.

There are fewer and fewer Frankforts every year. Not every roundhouse has potential to become an authentic motive power museum for its home road engines (if any exist), but there are a few with possibilities, like Como, Hugo, Williamson, Evanston, and a few others. We've lost places like Pontiac, St. Luc and Eugene in recent years, and they continue to fall.

As I noted before, the hazardous waste problem should not affect whether a building stands or falls, as both asbestos and in-ground pollution must be removed either way.

Bob, here's the problem.

There are any number of sites that we of this generation can deem "historic". Yes, we need to protect history lest the next generation is completely ignorant of what a train/log cabin/covered bridge/mill/battlefield is/was, and why they should care. But frankly, as the collective attention spans of Americans withers, it's getting much harder to keep them interested in, say, Mount Vernon, Washington Crossing State Park, Valley Forge, Gettysburg, or even Cape Canaveral/Kennedy. (I joked with one person that the only reason we still have Ford's Theatre about is because the event commemorated was bloody and gory. Had it been the location of the signing of the surrender of the Civil War instead, it would probably be an office building with a tiny plaque on the outside wall by now.)

Unfortunately, as any of us here can attest, running a railroad preservation facility to the standard we want to set demands huge amounts of resources and/or compromises like crazy. I'm personally very leery of, for example, the huge mall-like complex in Williams, Arizona, or the dome cars behind the steamers, or the mock gunfights staged before each departure. But those things have made the Grand Canyon RR (and similar steps for the Strasburg, Durango & Silverton, etc.) what they are today--financially viable, high standard setters, and a secure future for the industry and avocation.

I've racked my brains trying to think of historic sites that made a decent enough return on their "investments" to be considered viable but were "off the beaten path". The only ones I can come up with are no-maintenance places like the Standing Stones of Callanish in Scotland--a Stonehenge-like circle of stones sure costs less to maintain than a roundhouse, a 2-8-2, and several passenger cars and miles of track.

An article I've posted to Flimsies in today's Washington Post happens to highlight the financial woes of the Smithsonian Institution:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/29/AR2006032902544.html. The two newest museums, opened last year, according to an expanded article in the dead-trees edition, both pulled in one-third fewer visitors than expected in 2005: Both the new aviation museum out at Dulles and the National Museum of the American Indian pulled in 2.2 million in 2005, rather than the 3.3-3.5 million anticipated. If this were Steamtown or a new Smithsonian Railroad Museum or the new State Railroad Museum of [name a state], what would we be saying?

My wife and I journied down to Indianapolis yesterday to meet my daughter and son-in-law and pick up our three grandchildren who will be spending their Spring Break with us. I took a quick sidetrip to Frankfort from Interstate 65 to take a quick look at the Frankfort roundhouse.

First of all, it is a rather quick trip down Indiana State Route 28 into Frankfort from the Interestate. And things will probably even get better as SR 28 is being rebuilt to bypass the one small town it goes through (Jefferson, Indiana) and straighten out the few curves in the road. This project looks well along and my guess is that it will be finished this year.

As for the roundhouse itself:

1. That portion of the roundhouse in the photo immediately behind NKP Pacific #167 (which started this thread off a while back) is the section now missing.

2. The turntable pit currently holds water, which I think is not good for the motors (IF they are still attached) or the center pivot.

3. The roundhouse is down to 15 stalls; 7 in what I will call the center section and 8 in the west section (the "east" section being the portion torn down as mentioned above.) A few of these stalls by the way, did not have doors in them at the latest modification by NS or whomever.

4. There are some holes in the roof. And rotted wood. Overall, I would estimate that at least 10% of the roof is uncovered. None of this is unfixable but things aren't getting any better by not doing anything.

5. There were some damaged beams up near the roof. Again, not unrepairable.

6. David Farlows earlier report in this thread that the rail from the turntable into the stalls remains in place is, unfortunately, not correct. All of the rail between the table and the doors has been pulled up. What is even worse however, is the fact that the rail INSIDE the roundhouse in the various stalls was also pulled out. This includes the rail at the various pits. This was the most discouraging thing about my quick inspection.

7. There is at least one place where the windows at the back of a stall are missing.

8. The last (or first depending on how you look at it) two stalls in the west section actually have rail up to the roundhouse doors. In fact, these two stalls actually have rail into the "back shop" section of the roundhouse, the one bright spot in my inspection. These two tracks actually go through "rear entrance" doors and, although one track is cut off right outside the back shop, the other track meanders toward the coal dock area although it is hard to tell if it is buried in gravel as it nears the coal dock, or if it is pulled up at that point.

9. There does appear to be some cranes in the back shop area still in place which is good news. The bad news is that there is a hole in the top of the wall of the building at that point which is how I knew that a crane was still there.

10. There is graffiti inside the roundhouse, including what perhaps are gang writings. A modest amount, but there.

11. Although this section of Frankfort is not in a "bad" area, it is hard to believe that anyone could make a go of the roundhouse building for anything other than a rail museum. The area just isn't "upscale" enough. At least in my estimation.

Les

We did this in St. Albans after the scab outfit took over and wanted to use some stalls previously used by M of W for repairs to rubber-tired equipment for engine repairs. The pits had been filled with sand and concrete poured over to floor level. This was broken out with a jackhammer and the sand removed with a backhoe and shovels. The rails had been removed. The old tie stubs, which were pretty bad, were splintered and removed with the jackhammer. New ones were cut and pushed into the slots in the concrete, with new rails spiked down. Afterward, you'd never known the pits had been filled in. We did have to block the drains, which led toward the local brook, which ran into Lake Champlain and the city sewer. After that oily water had to be pumped out and evaporated with a special device installed for the purpose, and other oily sand and muck had to be disposed of to a hazmat facility in 55-gallon drums.

Bob-

To clarify; the pits in what I called the "center section" of the Frankfort roundhouse, were still there. Just the rails, etc. removed. In the "west section", there was gravel on the floor to make it all roughly level meaning that the pits could have just been filled in there, or removed. I did not have time to make that careful of an inspection.

Les

Stumbled across this old thread looking for something else and wondered of the current status of this roundhouse, turntable and coal dock.


Les

If online sources are to be believed:

1) efforts to preserve this roundhouse stalled/petered out around 2011/2012 because of NS obstructionism;
2) a small fire in September 2011 was confined to an office trailer stored in the adjacent machine shop building;
3) approximately half of the roundhouse's roof has collapsed since 2010, as visible from Google Earth Pro, as well as the south wall;
4) the URL for the fundraising group has been taken over by a Japanese online website poacher/squatter.

So, the potential is still there, but nothing of substance seems to be happening.

Previous thread: http://rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=29213

That Pacific is just out of the shop from a complete overhaul or something special is a foot. In 1941 locomotive cleaning on the Nickel Plate often was just wiping the cab side numbers.

NKP1155 -

Because of your comment, I went back and looked at the photo of 4-6-2 #167 again and for the first time, noticed that there apparently is another locomotive in a stall of the roundhouse which can be seen just to the right of the Pacific's tender. But my computer screen isn't large enough for details. To me, it almost looks like a diesel, but would the Nickel Plate have diesels in August of 1941? Perhaps someone with a better screen can discern what that locomotive might be.


Les

Now that I've looked at the photo again, I have to question the published date. It appears that NKP didn't add illuminated number boards ahead of the stacks of their Pacifics until around 1947, so I doubt that 1941 is the correct year. I'm guessing the 167 was in Frankfort as passenger protection power in the late 1940's.

The item visible near 167's tender could be just about anything, including the rear of another loco's tender, or one of the 1949-built F-M diesel switchers acquired for use in Madison, IL and Muncie, IN. There are probably other possibilities.

Tom

Tom - I now recall seeing a photo of a NKP 4-6-2 powered passenger train near Ambia, Indiana on this line (Frankfort, Indiana - Peoria, Illinois). My guess is if this photo WAS actually taken in the late 1940's, that the 167 was not protection power, but one of the Pacific's actually assigned to that train. Perhaps some other reader can advise more particulars of the passenger operation on that segment of the Nickel Plate, including the date when the train was taken off.

The other thing that the shiny 4-6-2 looks like is a locomotive set out for preservation in some city park. Of course, the late 1940's is a bit early for this but considering that Frankfort never had a locomotive donated to it by NKP, the Pacific looks like it would have been a great candidate!

Les

Seeing the new thread "The Garden in the Machine" about the remnants of the Nickel Plate Road roundhouse in Bellevue, Ohio got me to thinking about the old NKP roundhouse in Frankfort, Indiana. I checked for previous info here on RyPN and came up with this thread on the Frankfort house that was started by Bob Yarger way back in March of 2006. Much has changed since then; NKP Mike # 624 has been moved out of Hammond, Indiana, ITM is no more, the IHB's Hammond "switching tower" (Hohman Avenue) has been torn down. But what's the story on that deteriorating Frankfort roundhouse? Is it now gone too? And what about the privately owned turntable that was there, and the nearby coal dock? Any info appreciated.

Les

We made inquiries on the turntable two years ago and were told they still have "plans" for it. No sense trying further.

Just curious who "they" is, and what possible better use for it than the FWRHS could possibly be?