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| Northumberland roundhouse https://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=11750 |
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| Author: | bobyar2001 [ Sat Dec 25, 2004 2:46 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Northumberland roundhouse |
Not 1950, but May 1968, not too long before the engines were sent to Strasburg. Flame away if you will, but this is the kind of authentic setting I like to see locomotives displayed in. Roundhouse and coal dock were destroyed about 1986 or so, sadly. http://abpr.railfan.net/abprphoto.cgi?n ... uartet.jpg |
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| Author: | Alexander D. Mitchell IV [ Sun Dec 26, 2004 3:07 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Northumberland roundhouse |
Demolition happened in the spring and summer of 1987. There was some serious lobbying to get the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania established in part at this very roundhouse, for many of the reasons Brother Yarger would echo: still-extant water tanks and coaling tower, auxillary buildings, etc. There was also some minor quizzical thoughts about the feasibility of relocating Steamtown to the site at one point in the "we've got to get out of Vermont" phase; I'm reasonably certain Pennsy fanatic Don Ball was quite aware of the possibilities of the Northumberland site during his tenure as director. Unfortunately, here's the brutal reality: 1) the roundhouse, and the yard by which it was surrounded, were in a flood plain--one that takes a bit of doing to flood, but it is there. I believe I've seen photos of the turntable pit being pumped out post-flooding. 2) The roundhouse, at the time (and the site still to this day) was surrounded by active railroad trackage and yards. The nearest road access is via approximately 1.5 miles or more of private road through a railroad yard. (If I remember correctly, I had to cross one main line, six main yard tracks, and two or three sidings to get to the roundhouse, *after* PC and Conrail had made major reductions in trackage.) If this museum had been opened here in the 1970s, it would have mandated its own access road and overpasses, infrastructure costs that might have dwarfed even those of restoring a decrepit roundhouse or those of the Steamtown NHS. And for what? You still don't have a track on which to operate. (Employees actually made short-cut use of "the Rat Hole", a long underground sidewalk constructed as a bridge spanning the water of a wide underground culvert system, with access stairs poking up at the east end beside a street in a neighborhood where many of them lived, various points in the yard, and at the yard office and roundhouse.) 3) Northumberland itself was, and still is, very badly situated for auto traffic and tourist demands. At the present time there is planning underway to construct a major four-lane limited-access highway to the west to bypass, among other places, Northumberland, Sunbury, and Shamokin Dam, theoretically bridging the Susquehanna just to the north of Northumberland Yard. The reason, among others: Traffic through Northumberland is horribly jammed from a combination of local and through traffic on two-lane streets. (Ask our Sunbury-based reporter for updates.) In addition, in the 20/20 hindsight category, the main line upon which the yard/roundhouse sat, the former PRR Harrisburg-Buffalo line, is all but on life support itself, up for sale when CSX and NS bought Conrail. The only reason the line is still even in NS hands, I and many other analysts believe, is that either CN or CP would now pounce upon the opportunity to acquire the line to invade Pennsylvania and NS turf even further. It would now be on the order of foolhardy to situate a major museum on a backwater or moribund rail line--though, in all honesty, that situation hasn't seemed to affect Steamtown or the RR Museum of Pa., and Altoona's main-line action is not that big a benefit to Altoona's museum. Now, in all honesty, had the facilities survived to this day, aside from the flood plain problem there might be hope. The yards are a mere shadow of their former self, serving only as a switching yard for local traffic and interchange with the "Robey Family" cluster of short lines in the area. However, the damning problem is the same: You could put the current RR Museum of Pa. beside that former roundhouse, use both, and operate in a portion of the yard Spencer-style, and it *still* would only attract meager visitorship on the same level as Steamtown (which, naturally, would not have been built where it was had Northumberland become a museum) or the EBT--nowhere near the levels of the current Strasburg location. Much as I would want my hometown-area roundhouse to have survived, I do believe its survival would have come at the major expense of the fine collection now at Strasburg, and the parallel efforts of Scranton and Altoona. Now, on the other hand, a Carnforth-style "Steamtown" at Northumberland, using the gobs of money spent at Scranton and the Vermont collection.................. nope. We'd be making exactly the same arguments over the exact same problems, just changing "Scranton" to "Northumberland" in the text. |
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