I’m looking for some examples of diesel and steam repair and service facilities that are together. They can be in model or in real life. I have the Model Railroad book about locomotive service facilities but there is nothing about them being together. Any help would be great.
Don
The Repair and Service Facitlities depends on the year setting for your layout.
Most Steam facilities are for Railroads before 1960. After 1960 the Disels are replacing the steam locomotives so the facitlities are mostly for the Diesels. It is ok to have service for any Locomotive you have, but by the late 60’s most steamers have been retired. See if you can get info on the steam engines you have and the years the railroad lines retired them from service. If you need to be opernating your steamers in their correct years. You need to do research to see when a railroad line replaced the steam with Diesel Locomotives. (The time the Diesels were delivered from the makers. ) Example : 1935 Railroads would not have been running Disels Locomotives.
I’m modeling the mid 50’s so i have both steam and Diesels.
Don,
I have both on my 4 x 8 layout and it’s been a challenge fitting them “logically” so that it’s believable. I’ll try and take a picture of it tonight and post it for you. When you see it, keep in mind that the ash pit/ash conveyor are not yet installed and my coaling tower pit grate is temporarily replaced by a cement coaling structure.
Tom
Don,
I’m working on trying to get the pics uploaded so that I can post them but Railimages.com for some reason seems to be having some problems. I’ll post pics as soon as I can.
Tom
I’m not having any problems with Railimages, you might want to try it again now.
John
John,
I can log onto Railimages initially. But the problem arises when trying to upload photos from my computer to their server: I keep getting
The connection has timed out
The server at www.railimages.com is taking too long to respond.
Once that happens, I can’t even get Railimages to come up again unless I completely disconnect and reconnect to the Internet.
Tom
http://www.pmhistsoc.org/cgi-bin/gallery.pl?f=struct-wyoyd-1973-1
It is a bit small, but this 1973 aerial photo shows the C&O’s Wyoming Yard Shops. From left to right, the buildings are or were: steel car shop, wheel shop, locomotive shop (there are several smaller buildings around this building that are hard to distinguish), roundhouse, diesel house. You can also see the coaling tower on the lead to the roundhouse but the water tanks are gone. The diesel fueling areas are behind the diesel house and not visible in this picture.
The main shop building was the main heavy repair facility for the Pere Marquette and served as a heavy locomotive repair shop until 1984 for Chessie System. The steel car shop is still used. The roundhouse is completely gone. The main shop building is a steel distributor now. The diesel house does minor repairs.
I apologize Tom, after I posted my reply I realized I was having problems as well. I jumped the gun a bit. I sent an email to the system administrator to let them know. Sorry about that, John
ericboone
In an installation of that size, water for steam locos would have been delivered through standpipes, probably immediately adjacent to the coaling tower for ‘one-stop’ servicing. There appears to be a large steel tank to the left rear of the roundhouse, which could have been the water tank servicing several standpipes.
New diesel shops were usually built before the first diesel was assigned to a terminal on a Class 1 railroad, so it would be entirely correct to have a diesel shop framed up, and builders hanging wall panels, with not a diesel in sight. Of course, on short lines, the diesel would simply have moved into the existing engine shelter once the steamer died.
More than a few old coal towers survived for a long time as sanding facilities for diesels If they had been fitted to deliver sand to steamers, only the bottom-most portion of the distribution pipes and hoses would have required any changing, and narrow walkways at convenient sandbox access height would have been the only additions.
Chuck
In this case, I believe the water tower you mention is for the city waste treatment plant behind the facility (although I’m not absolutely sure). The railroad’s water tank was just in front of the roundhouse.
The roundhouse did service the railroads very first E7 diesels (I’ve seen pictures of them on the turntable) as the diesel house was not finished until about a year after the diesels arrived.
Don & John,
Seems like Railimages.com is happy again. I’ll try uploading this afternoon after I get home from work.
Tom
One of the service areas on my layout is based loosely on White River Junction, Vt. The roundhouse, diesel shop and TT are a bit larger then the real facility, but this way I get the best of both worlds. There are a few more shots of the service area on HTTP://i49. photobucket.com/albums/f265/pendragonp.
Hope this helps a bit, Don
[i
There’s an ideal. I like it. You should put more pictures of it on the net.
Donald
Nice work, ***! [:)][tup] Your facility is very believable.
Don,
I was finally able to upload to Railimages so here’s a few pics of my small steam/diesel fueling facility. Like I mentioned before, it’s not the ideal and it’s missing things like the ash pit/conveyor, inspection pit, etc. Things have also had to be selectively compressed, as well - more than I’ve cared them to be. (The downside of a small layout. [:(] )
Hopefully there’s rhyme and reason to it’s configuration. You’ll also have to overlook the “pink” grass.
Steam/diesel fueling facility
Diesel platform
Steam track from Engine house
Steam track
View of all three tracks from trackside
Steam track (left) - Service track (middle) - Diesel track (right)
Hope that’s helpful is some way…
Tom
If you are modeling the early transition era, it would be the same as the steam facility. The N&W had a long building called a “Lubritorum” that serviced steam, and later, diesel locomotives. It worked like a quickie lube and it was near the turntable.
Now, if you are talking about fueling facilities for diesels and steam, the fueling could be on or near the main line or near yard tracks. Someplace where they can be refueled without having to uncouple from their train. A diesel fuel rack would be with near or on the same tracks as the coaling / sand and water towers.
If you want more info on fueling facilities, I highly recommend Steam Locomotive Coaling Stations and Diesel Locomotive Fueling Facilities.
They also have a new book, Steam & Diesel Locomotive Terminals & Facilities that should be available by now.
Another book on engine terminals that has been around for a while is Carstens Publishing’s Locomotive Terminals and Railroad Structures.
Thanks for the references Gary! I’ll definitely look into those at some point.
Tom
On the inside front cover of Model Railroader Cyclopedia Volume 1: Steam Locomotives, there is a photograph of a Milwaukee Road engine terminal with a diesel house being built right next to the roundhouse.
Roundhouses were built so that the most space was at the rear, where the front of the engine would be, which was where most of the machinery and repair work could be done. Diesel houses tend to be in-line affairs with sections that allowed the trucks to be lowered and the carbody to be lifted, and balconies so that work could be done at the top of the locomotive.
Most railroads were completely dieselized between 1953 and 1955. Only a few of the largest and smallest were still doing serious steam maintenance after that. By 1960 only one or two holdouts remained among the major carriers, while a number of smaller lines ran steam through the 1960s.
Don, here are few more pics of the same area. It’s tough holding the camera still on these cold mornings.
Like to see some shots of your layout, too!
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f265/pendragonp/AlleghenyH-8Night.jpg
http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f265/pendragonp/DieselService1.jpg
Thanks for all the help on this guys. I have some ideals and now I’m off to he layout to see who some of them will work out.
*** I don’t have many pictures of my layout but here is a link to my web site. It still needs a lot of work.
http://www.freewebs.com/don_csx/
I’m posting my layout construction photos here.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v282/don_csx/
Here is a little information on my layout a couple people has asked me about.
My layout is called D&D MINING & STEEL. It is set in eastern KY around the 70s, & 80s. It is a double deck layout. The coal division is on the bottom level and the steel division is on the top level. Plans are to build a helix just haven’t gotten to it yet. I built a 16’ x 16’ heated and air condition building just for the layout. There are plans to add another 16 x 16 addition on to the building.
Donald
I have a book with lots of pics of the Argentine Yards in Kansas City in the mid-50’s. It definitely had mixed steam and diesel facilities. The book is Santa Fe Heritage, Volume 2, but you can probably find online pics of the Argentine Yards.
Other than that, you might watch a vid of “Thomas the Tank Engine” The island of Sodor has mixed diesel and steam facilities. 