While perusing my copy of George Abdill's classic book "Civil War Railroads" I came across a few photographs of covered roundhouses (with cupola) which look like the one in Baltimore.
There was a similar B&O structure in Martinsburg but not a "dead spit" copy. More closely resembling the Baltimore roundhouse was an Orange & Alexandria RR one in Alexandria.
Both the Martinsburg and Alexandria structures appear to have actually been used for locomotives instead of as a car facility in the Baltimore case.
Are there any other past examples which I have missed?

> There was a similar B&O structure in
> Martinsburg but not a "dead spit"
> copy.

I think B&O had a number of teepee-style roundhouses a la Martinsburg around the early system (as you note, a very different interal load-bearing arrangement than Mt. Clare)--I have seen images of a very similar one at Piedmont on the B&O main stem west of Cumberland. I think the teepees were more common on the B&O; the straight-column style on a grand scale at Mt. Clare may have been E.F. Baldwin's unique contribution.

> Are there any other past examples which I
> have missed?

Check out this famous 1856 George Innes painting of Scranton PA:

http://www.sanford-artedventures.com/pl ... wannaL.jpg


Innes's Lackawanna Valley
eledbetter@rypn.org

The Central Pacific Railroad roundhouse at Truckee California was covered early on. Originally built of wood, it quickly burned down, and was replaced by a stone structure. John Signor notes that similar stone roundhouses were also built by the Southern Pacific at Houston Texas and Algiers Louisiana.

Randy Hees

http://spcrr.org
hees@ix.netcom.com

> I think B&O had a number of teepee-style
> roundhouses a la Martinsburg around the
> early system (as you note, a very different
> interal load-bearing arrangement than Mt.
> Clare)--I have seen images of a very similar
> one at Piedmont on the B&O main stem
> west of Cumberland. I think the teepees were
> more common on the B&O; the
> straight-column style on a grand scale at
> Mt. Clare may have been E.F. Baldwin's
> unique contribution.

> Check out this famous 1856 George Innes
> painting of Scranton PA:

Without really knowing a lot about this subject, I'd guess that completely covered (or "tepee" style) roundhouses were reasonably common in large terminals in the 19th century for locomotive storage and servicing. The B&O Mt. Clare structure was far less common in that it was never designed or used as a locomotive facility but rather a car shop -- the idea apparently being that you could leave a car spotted in a single location during an entire building or rebuilding process, without needing to move it from work station to work station or stop work to shuffle it when other cars in the shop had to be moved. B&O had several other car shops of a similar but less grandiose design -- at least two of them at Mt. Clare.

herbhar@yahoo.com