yard facilities

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

In responding to another thread, I referred to an article (SP Historical & Technical Society’s Winter 1999 SP Trainline magazine) on the rural Dunsmuir, CA 1960s diesel fuel and sand facilities on the former Southern Pacific. Included in the article is a 1960 track plan for the northern end of the yard (which doesn’t include the turntable, roundhouse, Mallet house, depot, etc.)

I find the various identified facilities to be of interest. Most were expected; some were not. They included torpedo house, oil shed, coal shed, caboose supply, ice house, caboose track, yard office, switch shanty, crew dispathers & engineman’s locker room, fueling platform, diesel shop, sand storage tank, sand unloading hopper, store, roundhouse office, carpenter, metal & brass, fuel car track and unloaders, lumber shed, car repair tracks, diesel fuel tank and containment dike, pump house, car foreman’s office, wheel tracks, section quarters, snow fighting equipment storage track, and relief outfit storage grack.

If your yard facilities appear a bit boring, you now have little excuse.

Mark

2

Something to add to that list: Car Inspector’s/Oiler’s locker, washroom and lunchroom may all be one. Back in late '50’s Oakland, CA ours was an old passenger car set on ground with no trucks. Carmen had to wait for a train to be made up to inspect, oil, and set up initial air charge and test, and also had to inspect incoming trains for BO’s and bleed the air before the yardbirds could classify them. There was a lot of idle time! John Colley, Port Townsend, WA

3

John,

By the 70’s when I got there, the coach was gone and the car knockers were over in the switchman’s shanty and in the metal buildings between the coach yard and the cab track.

Down in the Homestead, they wound up on the west end of the yard building. Out in the Desert, they were over at the cleanouts near Track 25.

Evolution…