I’m looking for ideas on steam engine facilities for a small (true scale) yard area that would be appropriate for late 1800s and is intended to represent a major southern city and RR terminal. I’m sure this has been covered in an article in a past issue of MR but I only have the past several years on file and did not seem to find anything fitting. So far my plan calls for a short turntable with engine sheds or roundhouse, coal tower, sand and water. I’m not yet good enough to attempt scratch building so are there many N-Scale structures that would adequately represent these? How was coal delivered to the tower and stored?
The Toledo, St. Louis & Western (later NKP ) had a small facility at the eastern end of the Toledo yard. Toledo was the eastern end of the railroad, so the line terminated there. The locomotive facilities consisted of a 70 foot manual turntable, a 6 stall roundhouse, a small coaling tower, a couple of water spouts, a small sand house, and a water tower off to the side of the area. There was a coaling track on the side of the coaling tower. The facility was built before 1900 when 4-4-0s were the common locomotive on the line . The facility lasted well into the 20th century even after the turntable was too short for the road locomotives of the 50s. There is a Sanborn map of the area in 1936 that shows the relationship of the different parts of the engine services.
Update: I found a Sanborn map from 1895 and it shows the coaling was done from a large coal pile (150’ long) adjacent the engine service track. The map also does not show a water tower on the premises, but there could have been just a hose from a hydrant for filling tenders. I also see no sand house on the drawing, but there is a platform adjacent to the coal pile and that was likely where the sand loading was done likely from bags or barrels.
Click on this photo to give you some ideas. By looking at lots of old photo’s you can pick and choose the things you want to include and see where all the various things tend to be placed in a yard. You can see things that would add nice detail to a yard, but you may not think of, off hand.
It would depend on the railroad itself. How many locomotives would be housed and serviced from this facility? There would not be any need for a twelve stall roundhouse for a 3 locomotive fleet. Coal towers were not that popular in the 1800s because labor was cheap. There would be no need for a 100 ton coal tower if you serviced 40 locomotives a day when a 600 ton would be a better fit. Railroads were cheap and if they could get away with very little then they would. Even the mighty PRR had meager facilities at branch lines. Sand boxes would be filled with a bucket by the fireman or hostler if there was one. Coal would be shoveled on a small conveyor belt and fed to the tender. I saw a picture of a tender being coaled with a wheelbarrow from a bank along side the tender with a plank to run on. Locos would back from the house to a Wye or balloon track for turning if there were no turntable. Locomotives were not that big in the 1800s. It would look more realistic having smaller facilities and storing some locomotives out doors or under an open side shed.
