I just read the latest news brief, and can't understand what has happened. It appears that decades of planning and work have just been thrown out the window. There must be more to the story.
Steamcerely,
David Dewey

djdewey@cncnet.com

The Santa Clara County Fair grounds are isolated from any rail connection and built on land that has become some of the most valuable in the state. There has been talk about relocating the fair to less valuable land for a number of years.

ironbartom@aol.com

Didn't own their own land and got kicked out. Hmmmmm!!!!! Another lesson to be learned.

todengine@woh.rr.com

While I admire the great effort this fine group has put into the project, there is a lesson here, that being to stick up for saving historic structures and sites at their original locations. Left where it was, the roundhouse could have been repaired and strengthened, perhaps even returned to its original size for less than the cost of resurrecting it at a new location. This did not happen due to happenstance of events, but might have if UP had entered the picture a bit earlier. According to what I've found on the internet, there was at least one alternate plan for the commuter train service area, which now occupies part of the Lenzen Avenue site (at my 1999 visit, the commuter facility had not encroached upon nor come near the roundhouse footprint).

With this eviction, the San Jose project will now face further expense in just moving the mass of hardware and materials to another site. Hopefully, local government will help with that expense; perhaps the National Guard or military reserves can assist also.

An extant railroad roundhouse in the 21st Century is an extremely rare and historic building. Because moving them is extremely difficult and costly, to the point of being nearly impossible, behooves us to fight to save them where they sit and try to guide alternative uses for the site elsewhere.

ryarger@rypn.org

With the above in mind, here's a foolish question.. If all that stuff must be relocated, is the original Lenzen Avenue site still open? If so, the foundations are already in, the turntable pit is already dug and the roundhouse could be re-erected with a steel superstructure hidden by brick pilasters. Just a thought.

2479 where it should be
ryarger@rypn.org

Having had a similiar situation here in Chattanooga, I can certainly appreciate the situation concerning the fairgrounds. Chattanooga's most historic train station was the Union Depot at Ninth and Broad Streets. The head building dated to the 1880s while the car shed was a pre-Civil War structure. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but was not a National Historic Landmark.

When passenger service ended in 1970, the citizens of Chattanooga wanted to preserve the building but the land owner, the State of Georgia ignored the pleas of the citizens to save the historic structure and sold it to a developer who promptly demolished it and built two office buildings and the county library in its place. There had been some bad relations between Chattanooga and the State of Georgia, so the state intentionally sold the station to spite the city. The real shame was that the 1850s station building survived as late as 1950 before it fell victim to a street-widening! At the time of its demise, it was a resteraunt.

Having learned their lessons, Chattanoogans got stirred up when Terminal Station (now the Chattanooga Choo Choo) was closed. With the demise of Union Depot fresh in their memory, a group of leading businessmen formed the Chattanooga Choo Choo Corporation and purchased the 1909 station. Over a period of about three years, the facility was redeveloped as a hotel resort but it did retain a lead track from the old passenger main.
Yes, the building has been significantly altered from its original appearance, but its still here. The same actibity has saved the old Southern Railway office building here and the old railroad warehouses and freight depot. I know that there are a lot of preservation purists out there but we have to realize the amount of money needed to save these structures. When push comes to shove, is it better to bite the bullet and see the old roundhouse converted to a shopping center or see it knocked down and replaced with a commercial building?

envlink@voyageronline.net

Yes, better to see the building saved by some tacky, inappropriate commercial development than razed, but not by much. Roundhouses aren't easily adapted to such uses and such adaption destroys much of their history in the process. It should not have to come to that if rail preservationists speak up to utilize them as museums in the first place, which they seldom do. Somehow it is etched in many brains that rail museums may only be created in places that previously had little or no rail history and saving the historic structures that should house them is impossible. Not sure how to change that. See the link below for a cheesy adaption of a beautiful 1850s roundhouse and shop into retail outlets.

> Having had a similiar situation here in
> Chattanooga, I can certainly appreciate the
> situation concerning the fairgrounds.
> Chattanooga's most historic train station
> was the Union Depot at Ninth and Broad
> Streets. The head building dated to the
> 1880s while the car shed was a pre-Civil War
> structure. The building was listed on the
> National Register of Historic Places, but
> was not a National Historic Landmark.

> When passenger service ended in 1970, the
> citizens of Chattanooga wanted to preserve
> the building but the land owner, the State
> of Georgia ignored the pleas of the citizens
> to save the historic structure and sold it
> to a developer who promptly demolished it
> and built two office buildings and the
> county library in its place. There had been
> some bad relations between Chattanooga and
> the State of Georgia, so the state
> intentionally sold the station to spite the
> city. The real shame was that the 1850s
> station building survived as late as 1950
> before it fell victim to a street-widening!
> At the time of its demise, it was a
> resteraunt.

> Having learned their lessons, Chattanoogans
> got stirred up when Terminal Station (now
> the Chattanooga Choo Choo) was closed. With
> the demise of Union Depot fresh in their
> memory, a group of leading businessmen
> formed the Chattanooga Choo Choo Corporation
> and purchased the 1909 station. Over a
> period of about three years, the facility
> was redeveloped as a hotel resort but it did
> retain a lead track from the old passenger
> main.
> Yes, the building has been significantly
> altered from its original appearance, but
> its still here. The same actibity has saved
> the old Southern Railway office building
> here and the old railroad warehouses and
> freight depot. I know that there are a lot
> of preservation purists out there but we
> have to realize the amount of money needed
> to save these structures. When push comes to
> shove, is it better to bite the bullet and
> see the old roundhouse converted to a
> shopping center or see it knocked down and
> replaced with a commercial building?


http://http://www.avsweb.com/center/
ryarger@rypn.org

http://www.avsweb.com/center/
ryarger@rypn.org

The situation we have hear in Portland is the fact that the Brooklyn Roundhouse sits in an active yard, and there is a question as to what the UP's going to do with the yard long term. The UP has two yards in Portland, both with large buildings that are of no use to the UP as they are, but sit idle because of various reasons. The other idle building is circa 1950's, and not really historic. The problem is if UP rebuilds one yard, it will shift some of the operations to the other. Like any business, a company will not give away an asset it might need in the future.

In the last few years here in Oregon, there have been two historic properties that have come down to "if you want to save it, you have to move it". One, the former home of lumber baron Simon Benson, has been moved a few blocks, has been fully restored to its victorian splendor, and is now alumni offices for Portland State University.

The other is "The Gordon House", the only house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. This house was sitting on property that was worth more than the house, at least to the property owners. Thru many negotiations and the involvment of the F.L.Wright conservationists, the cinder block building was spared demolishion and moved several miles, in three pieces, to The Oregon Garden. It's currently open to the public and undergoing restoration.

While the locomotive groups, and our local neighborhood group would like to see the Brooklyn Roundhouse stay where it's at, it just might not be feasible. We can wait to see what happens, but if we do, we could loose the oppurtunity to re-erect the building within Portland as property is becomming scarce for 400+ ton locommtives and 100' turntables. The building is bolted timber frame, thus we don't have the problems many other efforts have, should the building become availible.

Smokebox

"orhf dot org"

> Yes, better to see the building saved by
> some tacky, inappropriate commercial
> development than razed, but not by much.

One good thing about the conversion of a roundhouse to some other use is that it is still possible to convert it back! When I first saw the Jackson Street Roundhouse in Minneapolis about five years ago, it was still as much a post office as when MTM got it. Since then the P.O. structure built over the turntable pit has been demolished, the turntable replaced, and all new stall doors put on. It's a roundhouse again, despite a permanent-seeming redevelopment that occurred when it was first sold by the railroad.

Frank Hicks

frank@gats.com

Correction:

> The other is "The Gordon House",
> the only house designed by Frank Lloyd
> Wright in the state of Oregon.

Smokebox

"orhf dot org"

First, I will assert that any use is better by far than no use. An empty structure is in every commercial and legal sense a liability. Like it or not, we live in a capitalist society. I don't plan on moving to Sweden, so I'm going to accept that. You seem to think that few rail museums are on historic rail property. I disagree. I can't say that I've been to the majority of museums in the U.S. but most that I've seen are on historic property. Now the oldest museums out there, like the MOT in St. Louis, or the B&O museum in Baltimore had a much smaller selection of historic property to choose when they were formed, since what we think of as historic property was active at the time. There just weren't many empty roundhouses or stations, and even so, B&O managed to be situated in one. The MOT has a historic depot, (not the one in the front mind you,) and the two oldest tunnels West of the Mississippi on their property. There's steamtown, the Roundhouse Museum in Georgia, the much maligned South Carolina Transport Museum, NW Ry Museum in Snoqualmie Washington, the Utah State Ry Museum, and the EBT, D&SNG, and C&TS which all operate on historic ROWs in historic structures, with historic equipment. And I've seen more small depot museums in states across the Union than I can shake a stick at. It seems to me that casting stones at the rail preservation community, which has saved innumerable historic structures, is not the way to save roundhouses and depots. The problem is this. Every time we turn around, someone is tearing down a historic depot or roundhouse, and it seems logical that rail history buffs should be the ones to save them. There are still, to this day, far more railroad structures, be they roundhouses, shops, stations, depots, or interlocking towers, sitting empty and unused around the U.S. than can be feasibly used as museums. In St. Louis alone I'm aware of two empty depots, two roundhouses, and possibly a shop building empty at last count. I'd love to see these buildings saved, but quite frankly, we have no need for one more rail museum, leat alone five, and five certainly could not be economicaly viable in such a small area. Now, over the last fifty years or so at least six stations have been redeveloped in St. Louis for uses as divergent as residential houses and shopping malls. Yes probably twice that many have been torn down, but you can't win them all, and the most important have been saved. Additionaly, I can't see how we can assume that a roundhouse would necessarily be a good fit for a rail museum anyway. Museum patrons are constantly dissapointed at crowded display conditions in museums anyway, and you just can't get back far enough from a locomotive in a roundhouse to get a good vacation souvenier picture. They're to small for the big musuems, and to big for the small ones. Large open rooms are murder to heat and cool, and no one wants to sweat in a museum. For a museum with ten or more locomotives and rolling stock, an average roundhouse is really way to small, and for a museum with no locomotives or rolling stock, it would be hard to use even a small roundhouse. Depots are a much better fit, and there's quite a few of those. Additionaly, depots have better plumming and amenities, as they were built to house people and not trains. What it boils down to is this. They're highly specialized structures, and none but the largest museums would need one. They weren't widely available at that time, and now it would difficult to move the museum to the roundhouse. The incentive not to move is huge. Your guests know where you are now. Will they be happy if you move into a roundhouse in a "seedy" industrial area, like East St. Louis, where the roundhouses are? Let the developers save them as they may. A retail development may be the ONLY feasible use for the structure. Additiionaly, the specific developement that your link shows doesn't look cheesey to me. I'd love to have that, rather than a strip mall near my home. Looks great. Let's hope we're so fortunate as to see more shopping centres in roundhouses.

Sincerely,
David Ackerman

Wallace Idaho Depot
david_ackerman@yahoo.com

Thirty years ago, when the first railroad station in the United States, in Ellicott City, MD was threatened with demolition, the County Executive of Howard County wanted to use it renovate it for county office space. I wrote their office and said it made as much sense as it would for the City of Baltimore to convert the CONSTELLATION into a garbage scow. Fortunately, I wasn't alone in my thinking, and an organization called "Historic Ellicott City" stepped in and renovated the station into a museum, and the rest is history


kevingillespie@usa.net