Steam & Excursion > This Steam Crew Is Going To Have To Get Used To These Folks!

There is so much going on in this photo that doesn't immediately meet the eye.  Once we see that the location is the Jamestown roundhouse on the Sierra Ry and the date of the photo is August 22, 1937, it all starts to come together.

Just look the engine crew man of Sierra #24.  He is clearly trying to keep out of sight on the backside of the Baldwin 2-8-0 and away from the hoards of camera toting railfans on the far side of the locomotive.  He does not seem to know what to make of what he is seeing going on in these usually peaceful yards.  He can't even hide out in the safety of the cab of his locomotive because it too is taken over by these visiting railfans.

What we see here is the very first railfan excursion to visit the Sierra Ry. On this trip the excursion train that left Oakdale earlier in the day would stop first at the Jamestown Roundhouse and then travel on to the Pickering Lumber Co. engine shops and finally on to the Enginehouse of the West Side Lumber Co..  At each stop the entire train of railfans would empty out and the fans would climb all over the various locomotives to inspect them while others photographed the goings on from the ground.

As this was the first such time any of these crew men from these 3 railroads had seen anything like they were clearly a bit apprehensive as to what was going on around them.  They had better get used to it, however, there would be many more of these visits from railfans in the decades to come.

Martin



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/25/20 04:03 by LoggerHogger.

---

Are there any TO readers here that have been in the Jamestown roundhouse and shop and have also been in the Orbisonia roundhouse and shops of the East Broad Top RR & Coal Co. and could explain the differences or similarity of each location?
Each location makes claims of 'the only xyz".  So what do you suggest?

Jamestown, Orbisina and Ely are the last pure and unaltered steam maintenance facilities left in the U.S.  For anyone who has been there, they will attest, they nearly exactly as they were, "Back In The Day".

Martin

The overhead belt power system comes to mind as something unqiue, doesn't Orbisonia have a similar system?

Out 

It's too bad that the 24 was not saved.  Considering the number of Sierra locoomotives that were preserved you would have thought the one used on the first railfan excursions would have been one of them.

Yes, Orbisonia does. I understand there was one at Mojave way way back in the day

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

Jamestown's roundhouse has been in continual use for maintaining and the repairing steam locomotives since it's construction in 1897. Even after Sierra's switch to diesel power, the steam locomotives were maintained for their revenue earning movie work. I'm not sure if EBT can be classified as continual. Are their any other roundhouses that fit that description?

Posted from iPhone

Thank you all for the interesting replies to my question but amazingly there seem to be no one familiar with both having done recent visits. The EBT shops does have the entire belt driven system in the shop but not used for understandingly safety reason, as no caging.  The wheel lath has been used with electrical power and maybe some other machines,  The EBT round house has not had any change or moderation since built. I wonder if Chama should not be included as an unchanged facility same as Orbisonia, Jamestown, & Ely.  Wick Moreman (former NS) had recently looked over the EBT in support of the new EBT Foundation, and said the yard and shops were the most amazing railroad facility he had ever seen.     



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/20 05:06 by PlyWoody.

PlyWoody Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thank you all for the interesting replies to my
> question but amazingly there seem to be no one
> familiar with both having done recent visits.
> The EBT shops do have the entire belt driven
> system in the shop but not used for
> understandingly safety reason, as no caging.  The
> wheel lath has been used with electrical power
> and maybe some other machines,  The EBT round
> house has not had any change or moderation since
> built. I wonder if Chama should not be
> included as an unchanged facility same as
> Orbisonia, Jamestown, & Ely.  Wick Moreman
> (former NS) had recently looked over the EBT in
> support of the new EBT Foundation, and said the
> yard and shops were the most amazing railroad
> facility he had ever seen.     

The shop facilities on the C&TS are complete modern fabrications.  While the original roundhouse and machine shop are still standing, none of the machinery in the shop is original.  In addition, the present shop was built in 1977.  The entire Antonito facility was built post 1970.  Chama was never a place where anything more than running repairs was made.  The Rio Grande's major shop was in Alamosa, 90 miles to the east over Cumbres Pass.  Durango had a roundhouse that could do minor repairs and 30 & 90 day inspections.

Chama's roundhouse dates from 1899, and was built for the small locomotives in use at the time.  With the arrival of the large engines in 1920's, it began to fall into disuse, as the new engines did not fit in the building.  Eventually the turntable was removed and only two of the 9 stalls had tracks in them.  In time, all but two the stalls were torn down.  One stall is still the original short length, while the other stall extends into the machine shop.  This is the only track in which a locomotive can be placed inside.

At one time Chama did have a belt driven machine shop.  To this day a set of belt pulleys are up in the rafters, and shop boilers are still in the back of the machine shop.  One of the big obstacles that faced the C&TS early on was the lack of a shop to perform major overhauls.  This was solved to a certain degree with the creation of the 2-track shop with drop pit in 1978-81.  At the time, it was adequate for the 3 operating locomotives the C&TS had.  Now, with as many as 6 locomotives in service, shop space is inadequate and some major repairs are being done in the under-sized facility in Antonito.