At WRM we had foam applied directly over the sheet metal roof of our shop since the metal was near the end of its life. There is no hard membrane, just foam with a reflective white top surface.

The shop is cooler in the summer, and unfortunately also a bit cooler in winter.

We also had skylights installed in the roof, which has reduced our use of interior lights significantly.

I hear you on the difficulties our groups have with decision making. A professional consultant can ideally provide the information needed for the owner-group to make intelligent decisions, but it also requires some decent leadership on the part of the organization to earn supporters' confidence for the project. I've seen the decision making process fall apart despite the involvement of an architect. The only fix for this is to have an organization that works reasonably well together, and yep, people panic when they hear some of the numbers involved.

Track spacing? If the building is for STORAGE, the tracks should be as close together as possible. California allows industrial tracks to be on 13-foot centers and yard tracks at 14-foot centers. Columns complicate this because of required side clearances. In California, columns need to be no closer than 8'-6" to the center line, which works out to nearly 18' centers on opposite sides of the columns, unless you can get a waiver from the State PUC. It is a good argument for clear-span buildings, but why limit ourselves to four-tracks across? The steel frames are capable of spanning much further than 60', and can keep going wider with intermediate columns. In fact, the biggest limit on these buildings are the fire code requirements that limit how much area you can enclose in one continuous space before you need sprinklers, fire resistant occupancy separations, and/or wide "public way" buffer zones.

For a SHOP building, I would want to look at recent diesel shop buildings to see what is being done in the industry. I would suspect these tracks might be on 16'-18' centers. Shops also needs spaces for tools, machine shop equipment, and work areas. These should be connected by aisles sized for forklifts and pallet handling equipment. Shops should also include an office, lockers, bathrooms, and possibly showers. The amount of space needed for this needs to be determined by a variety of factors including the amount of machinery to be included, the number of volunteers that will work there, and the number of projects to be worked on simultaneously.

For a DISPLAY building, I would want to get the tracks pretty far apart. ~30' spacing would allow visitors to SEE whatever is on display. Of course, tracks can be grouped in pairs, which would allow everything to be seen from one side. Another idea would be to put the tracks on a tight spacing (14'), but by only ever have equipment on alternate tracks so you can create the deep aisles needed for viewing and light. The aisle space could be used for other types of museum exhibits as long as you can see over them. It would be especially nice to consider curved and/or non-parallel tracks designed to create specific scenes for our collections.

Lighting is crucial as well. We can actually see things in pretty dim light as long as everything else is even dimmer. The light needs to be in the right place. Our eyes are sensitive to contrast, and we need to make sure that the exhibits are the best lit things in the building. The glare from poorly placed windows or skylights will make it difficult to see the collection. A display building will need to be built to higher standards, not just for the sake of aesthetics, but because of the life safety and accessibility issues that arise when you invite the public into a building.

The pre-engineered roundhouse idea is an interesting one, and it would result in a cheaper building. I can imagine how it would work. We would want to keep the span between frames at the rear of the roundhouse down to 25' or less. I think we'd run the frames radially, and span the pulins between them. A radial shed roof or low-slope gable would be easy, atop which you could add roof monitors or skylights. Splitting the profile into two sheds could give you a clerestory as many roundhouses had. I would expect that the engineering for this would have to be custom, since the companies are best equipped to do orthogonal buildings. That said, I don't think it would be much more work.

It may be better to do this as a one-off custom project. What is the market for "generic" roundhouses? How many groups are ready to build roundhouses, and would be willing to compromise on the design just to save a relatively small amount of design fee?

Two sheds? Arthur "2 Sheds" Jackson? Aha, I see your point now.....never mind.

I think when you reach a point of deciding you can afford to build a roundhouse, you can also afford an architect. Still, I'm unaware of any modern modular steel frame design for one that is in the public domain. A fee paid could make the difference between building one or not, or having that restroom or not, for more marginal organizations, so there's something to be said for developing one and having it available to anybody - hell, I bet a lot of people who think they can't afford one might find they could if only they had real numbers and a real product to consider. So, let's think about a shortline-sized one for smaller groups centered on a Nevada State RR Museum style pitless armstrong turntable. We don't all have 4-8-8-4s to house. Few of us do........

Customization can be done in terms of aesthetic choices made about sheathing,doors, windows, trim and overhang, etc. After all, George Clooney, Brad Pitt and I share essentially the same skeleton (less a finger or so in my case), but their covering is much more marketably aesthetic than mine (shut up, Jason.)

Randall, does this sound practical to you?

dave

I just want to highlight a very correct way for a professional to come on here and post about his profession.

1. Actually informative information, not just the scare-tactic of "hire a professional".
2. An admission that there is a limit to the usefulness of his trade.


3. Discloses his stakeholder status, complying with the relevant laws.


4. A very well rounded description of WHY someone should hire his profession, instead of merely scare tactics and "just because our profession is king of your pocketbook."


5. A balanced view of both the good and the bad of his profession.
6. A basic hit of how you pick a good one.


I gotta tell you though, it's the same dynamic I talk about with lawyers. They may be good at their trade, but YOU know your business far better than they ever possibly can, and the devil's in the details that are rather expensive to hash out with your lawyer. Because of this, the well-informed insider polymath can actually out-do the visiting specialist, to the point where it can be a real coin-toss who you're better off with.

I personally think the winningest strategy is to find your insider mad genius, someone like Bob Immergluck at WRM, loose him to build the perfect facility... and then run it by a pro to fix all the dumb mistakes. Actually, the next step is to haggle out which are really mistakes and which are better-informed vision. E.G. "Whoops, you can only access the bathrooms by going outside." "Allows us to lock up the building and still have the bathrooms accessible." "You have three times the bathroom capacity that code requires for your daily visitor count." "That's because they all tend to get off the train at the same time."

Of course, being your own lawyer has special legal benefits which can be parleyed all sorts of ways. Being your own architect does not.

I wouldn't completely discount the significance of the skeleton. Jacobson seemed to think the inside is important enough to justify the expense of heavy timber trusses in his roundhouse. The interior of this steel building system roundhouse will look markedly different from a historic building. Not necessarily a bad thing, but worth being aware of.

Also, some skeletons come in very different shapes. Some might say the roof shape is a bigger part of a roundhouse's look than whether it is brick or concrete on the outside. Here a are a few of the different roundhouse roof typologies that could probably be made with clear span steel frames:They don't have to be clear span of course, but with this system, they could be. The more shapely roofs would be more efficient with a column or two.

So, which roof do you want?

The idea seems doable, but who are the groups that want to get together on this?

Also, to head off the inevitable from Robert, unless you already have carbarns, should this be a priority?

Everybody has to pick their own priority. Some of the smartest groups out there purposely limit their acquisitions. Matt B's group in Hickory, NC, comes to mind.

I don't think they think they need a roundhouse, and have already planned a train shed.

Carbarns might be a priority, but unless you are willing to triage, no sense spending money preserving something you never will use for any practical or interpretive purpose by paying to house it. Better to give it away.

So, with a lot of respect to Robert, I don't think a blanket statement that everybody in the industry needs a carbarn right now is necessarily accurate. Many need less crap more than a carbarn. Adequate storage for just the right amount of crap.......that's the answer regardless of chosen structure. I don't know that he ever advocated an absolute anyhow.

Can we actually start generating some real numbers just for better quality conversations? If we can, then perhaps we can fnd out what groups may be legitimately interested.

dave

Or, you could find someone that already knows your business (mostly), railroad architectural history, cost-effective construction technology, and is a licensed architect.

Kidding, kinda.

I understand some of the attitude about outsider consultants, and there are a lot of people that helped earn consultants that reputation. The railway preservation movement has accomplished a lot, but I don't think we are keeping up with the rest of the world. We need to do a lot more to recruit the next generation that is going to take care of all this stuff, and to do that we need more sophisticated approaches than what our insiders have come up with.

You and I agree about a lot of the problems our little industry faces, but I don't have confidence that there are enough polymaths in our midst or that they are going to champion "visitor experience" to the extent we need to. I think there is a lot of potential for our museums to be self-sustaining attractions that are popular with the public. I know I don't have all of the answers on how to get there, but I know we need to invest a lot more in this visitor experience stuff, and I just don't see that most insiders have the talent or inclination.

I'd be happy to walk the grounds with you to show you what I mean.

As you've said yourself, fundraising is not a zero-sum-game. Some donors are going to be thrilled with the idea of paying professionals to develop educational exhibits, or a docent training program, or a master plan that is focused on visitors. If you don't have the expertise in-house, you can either try to learn it yourself over several years, or you can find someone that will listen to you, come to understand the problems, and apply their expertise to help you come up with solutions.

Aesthetics will come into play for roof selection, I should think. Most of the wood framed, wood sheathed roundhouses I can think of are shed roof designs. So, if all the budget allows for is pre-finished steel sheathing, such as Strongpanel, which looks mostly like board and batten siding, the obvious choice is the shed roof. Conversely. if the budget allows brick veneer, the clerestory or monitor designs would be more appropriate (although I can think of some small brick roundhouses with shed roofs). To me the the low gable is the least aesthetically pleasing, although I can think of some C&NW examples of small wood houses with this roof... however, the originals weren't very pleasing to look at, either.

Whoops, spoke too soon... A quick browse through Locomotive Facilities C&NW and CStPM&O - Engine Terminals by A. Joseph Follmar shows that this style was popular, at least on the NorthWestern around 1900, rendered in both brick and wood. I realize that everyone has their own favorite prototype, but I recommend this book as a source of inspiration, as it has photos and drawings of multiple roundhouses, built by several predecessor companies, from the 1870's through the end of steam.

Don't discount the steel frame, steel skin building. Modern day construction often uses a single course of brick veneer to face what is otherwise a plain-Jane metal building,using the stiffness of the steel construction to stabilize the thin veneer of brick. It is a detail that could possibly be added later, as funds allow, provided the foundation is designed from the beginning to carry the brick.

If you pack them that tight, you're really going to hate life when you've got to work on the cars or get a cart between them, which does happen sometimes. We're pretty close to that on WRM Barn 2, and it sucks. As for the annoying government regulations, those are not designed with railroad museum carbarns in mind. Carbarns are a special type of building. If a nuclear reactor were to build nearby, the fire marshal would not treat the rather large containment building the same as a dance hall, demanding 12 double-door exits. Perhaps someone should write a handbook for regulators in the handling of car barns.

One ferinstance is occupancy. The bulk of the square feet is railcars, not people. It matters whether the "railcar space" (non-walkways) is reasonably habitable by people. At WRM carbarns, they are definitely not. The regulator is out of line to assert that a 25,000 square foot carbarn with 6000 square feet of usable humanspace should be regulated as 25,000 square feet. I would argue that it shouldn't be treated as 6000 either, because 6000 square feet of narrow aisles are not the same as a 60x100 dance hall. But if you don't handle it well, they could want fire exits on the long sides of the barns (good luck making the signs visible). As far as fire suppression, again, this is a "generalist" requirement for buildings of a certain size, again assuming that the building is cheek to jowl with people or fast-acceleration flammables. Trains are just not that flammable. Some burn mighty, but they burn slow.

The other thing about a carbarn is -- a carbarn should only be a carbarn. Sure, your museum has lots of other building needs, but don't try to overload the carbarn design to be a bunch of other stuff too. Outside of incidental wall or aisle storage, the only thing in a carbarn besides cars should be the contents of cars. The reason is that it complicates the heck out of the project in terms of construction, use and regulation. Plus, carbarns need to be designed so they are not seriously damaged by a run through. It should knock the building's skin off and that's all. If the last 60 feet of track 1 is your bathrooms you could have a real mess.


Much wider than that. Look at the WRM shop, designed by Dave Johnston. I believe the tracks are on 30 foot centers and I wouldn't go much tighter than that. It leaves room for scaffolds on both tracks, plus forklifts, plus a few tools and parts to be set out. One running track, one long-term project track, with room for 2 cars each. That's an essential trick of that shop's design -- with so little track space, it guarantees projects don't go into the shop and die. There simply isn't room. The wings are a wood shop, a metal shop and all the other stuff a shop needs. No bathroom. Walk 200 feet to the VC.

I'm toying with another shop design, take WRM's layout but push the tracks apart to 50-60 feet, and push the wood and metal shop between them. The outer wings then become project and storage areas for the adjacent tracks. Storage: set some containers there for lockable space (cheaper than cages, more secure, opaque, has usable roofs, and no building permit required).


Wouldn't that be nice. I will be shocked the day I see a railroad museum with surplus carbarn space. That space will be filled in months as friends of various equipment race to get it put in the carbarn. Your idea about having close-center tracks we simply don't use has been discussed here before. Another idea is store equipment there, but pull it outside at the beginning of the day.

The other problem you've got is with 30 foot centers, you now have 20 foot aisles. That's a LOT of public space, see above discussion of what percentage of the carbarn counts toward occupancy and how that affects building codes.

Of course, too narrow is bad too. Wheelchairs. A lot of noobs look at ADA and imagine a solitary wheelchair driver, and a tumbleweed. That's not the real world, handicapped tend to travel with a posse, which is awesome for ticket sales by the way. So you'll have a wheelchair driver and 16 of his closest friends (sometimes a few in wheelchairs) ambling down that "accessible" path. Is it adequate? Now here comes a fellow the other way, who wants to pass them. Oh wait, he's in a wheelchair too. Getting awfully crowded for that 14 feet :) I've seen installations that technically passed ADA by the hair of their chinny-chin-chin, but a tiny bit more love would've made them a lot more decent.

Speaking of ADA, build your bathroom with at least two wheelchair stalls so if one breaks, it's not a compliance issue and you can take your time fixing it. Besides people tend to get off the train all at once, and/or, often one of them is filled with a dad/mom changing their infant. Oh. And bathrooms, the automatic lights in them... there should be a smallish light directly above the stalls, which is always on. Only need 10W or so of fluorescent or LED, but enough that a fella can finish the paperwork.

Very interesting discussion. I would like to add a few points.

1. The aisle width requirements will vary with the type of rolling stock being displayed or housed. The Trolley Display Building at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum has 21.5' track centers for its viewing aisles. This is adequate for display of 45'-50' long electric cars but will not work with displays in the center of the aisles. It is insufficient for display of steam locomotives or 80' passenger cars. This is apparent in the new building at WRM which appears to have similar aisle widths.
Similaly, storage building aisle widths can be less for 8.5' wide electric cars than for 10.5' wide locomotives.

2. There are many choices for the type of door that can be used. The traditional hinged door can be used on a steel framed building as well as on a wood framed building. PTM has this type of door on both types of building. I would avoid the use of overhead doors on any building with trolley wire. Door bridges are available but require a lot of maintenance. PTM avoided this problem by not installing trolley wire in its shop building.
PTM also is planning to use a bifold (vertically folding) door on its next building. This type of door is most commonly used on aircraft hangars. It has the advantage that very wide doors can be used (36' in our design) and can be used to permit closer track spacing in storage buildings than doors that require intermediate posts. IRM also uses this type of door. These doors are absolutely incompatible with trolley wire!

3. In my opinion, the appropriate level of protection for rolling stock is exemplified by the buildings at PTM. This includes insulation, a sealed (fully concreted) floor, humidity cotrooed ventilating fans, a fire and intrusion alarm system, and a fire supression system. Rail equipment is fairly robust and does not require full climate control except in the most extreme conditions. This level of climate control also provides a comfortable visitor environment except on the coldest winter days, when the museum is usually closed.
Full climate control is, however, required for archival collections, as well as for interactive displays using electronic equipment. That is the reason that I suggest that a seperate display room be part of a museum plan, rather than mxing displays with rolling stock, unless a museum (such as CSRM) can afford full climate control for a significant part of its rolling stock.

Have only been following this for a while, and am probably going to put my foot in my mouth, but some comments, perhaps from a historical perspective. . .

I seem to recall a number of standard roundhouses were built of steel, covered with corrugated sheathing on the outside and industrial metal windows. I'm not positive, but I think the Brooklyn roundhouse in Oregon (current and soon to be demolished home of SP 4449, SP&S 700, and some other stablemates) is such a standard structure from the Southern Pacific. Something like this, using fabricated steel trusses instead of girders, might be an acceptable approach that also maintains the interior look of an older roundhouse, while the corrugated steel on the outside would replicate the exterior appearance, even with a modern girder type skeleton. In fact, I'm a little surprised that a large replicated roundhouse in Ohio uses as much wood as it does; I would have thought an emphasis on fireproof construction would have made steel a better choice.

Of course, such a building sheathed in corrugated steel may not be considered the most attractive structure, and there are some instances where that would be considered a handicap in spite of its potential authenticity.

It's also my understanding that some of these structures, like their modern counterparts, could be disassembled and re-erected at a new location. I have heard that this even may have been the ultimate fate of the post Civil War roundhouse and shop facility in Martinsburg, W.Va., had the local preservation efforts there failed at that time. This came from a fellow who ran a machine shop in Martinsburg, who claimed he had been consulted about the dis-assembly of those structures. This inquiry had supposedly come from a museum in the midwest that had demonstrated that it had a bit of money (in fact, it had fairly recently acquired a pair of significant and large steam locomotives, one of them a Super-Power design as interpreted by Baldwin). This is not as wild a proposal for this facility as it may seem; this roundhouse was--and is--essentially a prefabricated or semi-prefabricated building. Its cast trusses and support columns were made and temporarily erected in Baltimore at the Mount Claire shops prior to being delivered to Martinsburg. The brick walls visible in the structure today are, and always have been, mere curtains to keep the weather out. The essential design was used in several locations on the B&O, one of them reportedly being Piedmont, W.Va., which was demolished around 1911 or so. A photo has also turned up of at least one other one in Grafton, W.Va., also long since demolished as well.

Someone brought up the comment about how big the house should be, noting that not many rail museums need to house anything as long as a Big Boy or a Yellowstone. It's worth noting that many of the old roads had a similar problem in that a big Mallet or an Allegheny wouldn't fit in the roundhouses at some division points. The solution there was to build what was called a "Mallet house," a long skinny shed, primarily for the big power that wouldn't fit. Most of these, from the photos I've seen, only had two tracks. This would include the Mallet house at Hinton, W.Va., on the C&O, and a similar looking structure on the SP at Dunsmuir, Ca.

The point is that some places can use both types of structures; the only problem is coming up with the money. Oh well, how much of a surprise is that?

Sure, but there are lots of costs associated with any individual project, whether it's to add to stalls, or just add brick. It is much cheaper to have it included the first time.

It may make sense to break things out of the contract that volunteers can easily do themselves after the building is done, but it can be problematic to impossible if these are things that need to be done while the contractor is still on the job, or are needed for a certificate of occupancy.

Harriman seemed to like low-gabled roundhouses with narrow monitors along the roof ridge. A number of the SP roundhouses around here had been built that way at a time when the railroads thought Consolidations might be the pinnacle of motive power. By 1910 or so, SP was pretty much out of the roundhouse building business. They must have figured out that engines were going to continue to get bigger than their turntables, so SP started building parallel-tracked enginehouses with wyes nearby such as the ones at Suisun, Indio, Colfax, Mojave, and many others.

This kind of stuff is exactly why it is best to be in a dialog with the client and other organizations that have already had this rodeo, but it raises other questions as well. If it really is a building for just storage, what is the minimum amount of work that would every have to be done before pulling the car out and working on it outside, or in the shop? Oiling the bearings? Tying up loose brake equipment? If it is a storage building that will also house a work area, do you make the aisles wider throughout the building, or do you leave a portion of a track empty for the extra working room? Does the need to roll a cart through suggest the aisles get paved, or is a ballast floor going to work?


Building a carbarn that you let the public into opens up some grey areas, but building inspectors have some amount of discretion at determining a building's occupant load and they should be willing to work with the project's architect on this question. Inspectors are a lot more conservative when they do not have confidence in the project sponsors and designers and they tend to distrust amateurs. Since the Jensen Carhouse does not have a wall of exits, or even a single cross-aisle, it would appear this regulatory over reach was sorted out.


The code allows for alternate measures if modeling can demonstrate their effectiveness in simulations. This is a course usually only pursued in very large and expensive buildings. The big problems I see with sprinklering a carhouse is that the fire can burn unchecked beneath or inside the cars before the sprinklers will have a chance to be effective. By then, the highly "involved" fire will likely overwhelm the sprinkler system. Does this make a sprinkler system worthless? Probably not.


The codes spell out the requirements for buildings that contain a mix of uses/occupancies/construction types. It is more complicated, but it can be figured out. Bathrooms would be better located to the side in a lean-to, or other portion of the building that did not have 18' clear ceiling heights, such as beneath an office or storage mezzanine.


I could see a number of different ways a working shop could be laid out depending upon how much space is available for the building and the track ladder that serves it. There really is no one right answer to any of these questions, which is one of the reasons why a single standard plan would probably not work.


Yes, it would be nice. The point is that this is a Museum Building, not a carbarn. It is for the public and the Museum's prizes; it is not for storage. Building a museum building is what separates a private collection owned by a club from a public museum that is a vital part of its community. One of these organizations will thrive, the other will not.

Carhouse One should be rebuilt as a Museum, not a carbarn. WRMs collection is no longer growing, and most everything is indoors. There is enough space available to nearly double the width of the building, and a two-phased build could allow everything to stay indoors during construction.

No one likes those timers. I can only offer that dietary improvements might help.

The center part of WRM's shop is a recycled building (a lumber yard which was removed to build the BART line in San Leandro). The side wings are WRM add-ons which had to be specially engineered to expand the building.

I'm not sure that having wood and metal shops really close together is a good idea. Sawdust really makes a mess when it mixes with oil in a machine shop, and lots of oil can cause problems in finishing woodwork.

We are looking at the steel girder approach in this discussion because it is more affordable. It is very expensive to fabricate trusses out of riveted angle iron as it had been in the past. By using the pre-engineered steel frames, we are trying to keep it in the world of a proven and reliable building system that is currently the most affordable way to put up a permanent building.

Accurate, or closer to accurate reconstructions of any type of historic structure can be designed built, but at greater expense. Clearly, The Age of Steam project has chosen this approach. Although I am not that familiar with Midwestern roundhouses, and I have wondered if the use of heavy timber trusses is appropriate for a roundhouse of that design? That said, heavy timber is more fire-resistant than steel trusses.