Just curious if this old stone enginehouse of the Rockton & Rion still exists as part of the South Carolina RR Museum? What does it look like today?

http://donross.railspot.com/rr712.jpg
ryarger@rypn.org

Bob,

I've been told the shop was demo'ed in the 1980's, but I haven't seen it myself.

I was there in ~1978 or 79, and it was still completely intact, including working drop table, wheel lathe, all other engine repair machinery (driven off of a line shaft) & tools, plus 90% of a full set of brand new flues for #712, which had never been installed. We happened by as one of the quarry employees was making his rounds; he was really cool and gave us a tour of the shop and told some steam tales.

There was also another huge stone walled shed nearby, about 4 tracks wide with some relatively ancient gondolas inside. There was no rail connection to it, and it looked like it hadn't been used in ~50 years.

It makes me sick to think that the engine hosue didn't get saved.

Regards,
Hugh
> Just curious if this old stone enginehouse
> of the Rockton & Rion still exists as
> part of the South Carolina RR Museum? What
> does it look like today?


The Ultimate Steam Page
whodom2001@yahoo.com

> Just curious if this old stone enginehouse
> of the Rockton & Rion still exists as
> part of the South Carolina RR Museum? What
> does it look like today?

Very little of the stuff at Anderson Quarry is still there. A lot of it was demolished extremely recently -- within the last 5-7 years, actually.

Shortly after Martin-Marietta Aggrigates donated the railroad to SCRM, the previous owner sued the Museum. He claimed that the line from Rion to Anderson Quarry was actually a spur track and had not been included in the sale to Martin-Marietta. The fact that M-M had been paying taxes on it for over ten years at that point didn't seem to phase him. The Museum's lawyer at that time was anti-operation and saw no need for the track all the way to Anderson Quarry. So he settled out of court, which cost us the last mile of the railroad and the stuff at the quarry. We were later told that if we'd stuck to our guns we could have gotten everything. I won't go into this any further, since I get mad whenever I think about it.

Anyway, as a result of this fiasco, our ownership of the railroad stops a mile short of Anderson Quarry itself. The track ends in the middle of the woods a couple hundred feet before the line used to cross the Mill Creek bridge, a beautiful multi-arch stone viaduct. It's not terribly high but it's an incredible structure. The current owner of this land is more or less friendly to the museum, but his deed carries a restriction that the property cannot be used for a railroad. The track ends at a barbed wire fence that crosses the ROW at a sharp angle. Beyond that, the ROW is relatively clear but completely absent of any track.

I drive through the Anderson Quarry area about once or twice a year. A couple buildings are still there, but the shop and enginehouse were demolished to harvest the granite. The current owners of Anderson Quarry are harvesting whatever granite they can find already out of the ground and shipping it. Winnsboro Granite stockpiled a HUGE amount of "scrap" stone out there. At the current rate they're selling stone, they've probably got enough rock already quarried to last another 250 years (my estimate).

For a while, the owners were using an old American rail-mounted crane on a short section of the remaining track just east of the road. This crane now appears to be out of service. We had hoped to get it, but the problem of how to get it over the gap in the railroad between the quarry and our end of track, not to mention the fact that it's been allowed to deteriorate quite a bit, makes that unlikely.

The Museum *does* own one Winnsboro Grantie structure, the old office building at Rion. We've got a grant that will pay to have this building completely rebuilt -- in fact I'm the grant manager for this project. The architect's plans should be forthcoming in a few weeks, and we hope to bid the contract on this work by the end of the summer. If all goes well, this building will be open as our Rion depot next season.

The South Carolina Railroad Museum
mconrad@compuzone.net

> It makes me sick to think that the engine
> house didn't get saved.

Well, at least nearly all the locos that were in it were saved. The only R&R enignes that got cut up were the two dinkies Willie Mosie used to run in Anderson Quarry. They were no great loss, they were both well beyond being slap wore out. Frankly, I'm amazed the R&R got away with running those things as long as they did. Both from a legal standpoint and from a practical one.

The cars got cut up too -- based on the pix I've seen of 'em they weren't any great loss, either. SCRM has two ex-R&R side dump cars that managed to evade the torch. We were using one of them to dig out the cut at Greenbrier until we screwed up a bearing on it. A third side dump car was converted to a flat back in the '70s, it's now the stock car that's displayed at Rockton behind H&B #44.

The South Carolina Railroad Museum
mconrad@compuzone.net