I am seeking scaled architectural drawings of Southern Pacific Roundhouses and related locomotive maintenance facilities, including but not limited to: watertowers, sanding towers, turntables, drop tables, machine shops and backshops. I am most interested in securing documents that may relate specifically to the facilities constructed at the Brooklyn Yard in Portland, Oregon.

Two roundhouse types were developed at the Brooklyn Yard. The "old" roundhouse was a 12(or 13)-stall brick building that was demolished in the 1960's. The foundations and pits still visible underneath current asphalt pavement. The "new" roundhouse is an existant 4-stall bolted timberframe building with corrugated siding. The current facility utilizes an American Bridge Company 100' electric motor Turntable. The facility also included a 8-stall brick & steel back shop/machine shop. The tracks, foundations, slabs, and backfilled pits of the bakshop are all existant. Drawings for any or all of these facilities would be greatly appreciated.

As I am not next to my library at home currently, I do not have the facility construction dates immediately available. I will post any additional information on the buildings later this evening.

I want to be clear though, that any "standard" Southern Pacific Roundhouse or non-Brooklyn drawings would be greatly appreciated. I have a theory, based on photograhic evidence, that the "old" SP Brooklyn Roundhouse and the SP Bayshore Roundhouse were contructed from the same prototypical plans. I fully understand that these two facilities did not have the same stall count, yet I believe these designs were based off of the same unitized plans. Features including apparent stall depth, brickwork, low-arched window bays, timber posting/framing, and smoke/light clerestories (original to each - later removed,) indicate striking similarities. All this would lead me to belelieve there were, in fact, standardized plans for these buildings.

Although I have no real case to state, I am also of the belief that the later generation SP Roundhouses that were built for the newer and larger, Depression/World War II Era locomotives were also standardized, unitized solutions.
This theory is based on similarties between the Brooklyn Roundhouses and later additions to the recently demolished Eugene Roundouse.

Any elaboration on this topic beyond my drawing requests, including written "Interchange" posts, photographic references, helpful hyperlinks, and non-web based resources would all be appreciated. Thank You.

http://www.orhf.org
gkamp@mwaarchitects.com

As a start... "Southern Pacific Lines Common Standard Plans" Volumes 1-5, published by Steam Age Equipment Company of Dunsmuir, CA (copyright 1997).

I picked up my copy of volume 5 at the bookstore of the Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City in April 2001.

Pages 30-31 give the roundhouse data as of May 31, 1919. The data consists of Division, Location, Type of House (Round or Engine), Date of Construction, Type of Construction, Kind of Floor, Number and depth of Stalls, Pits, Turning Facilities (wye and/or table), length and construction of table, estimated cost of construction, and remarks.

doc



The Heber Valley Railroad
utweyesguy@aol.com

After performing a similar search for the former SP Lenzen Roundhouse in San Jose (brick constructed, 15 stalls, built in 1899), I have found the best single source for SP drawings to be at the California State Railroad Museum. Nearly all of the drawings I found referenced various modications to the Lenzen roundhouse site. In addition, do not overlock any photographic records which may be used in conjunction with any available drawings that you locate. Because of Espee's design standardized, do not limit your data search to only the Brooklyn site. The SP drawing collection is neither entirely cataloged nor to be considered complete; nonetheless, CSRM is a great starting point. Good luck.

CSRM Library Database
middlebrookk@kaisere.com

Thanks for the leads on the drawings.


http://www.orhf.org
gkamp@mwaarchitects.com