Nostalgia & History > Toto Tuesday: Snoozin' at the barn

Back in the old days there seemed to be a diesel service facility in most every RR town of any size or importance. Local railfans and even fans passing through town could usually rely on visiting these places to see what kind of power was sitting around in between jobs. But then the mega-merger mania of the 80s & 90s took place and the pencil pushers decided to eliminate many of these smaller facilities.

Once upon a time you could grab your camera & tripod, mosey down and burn up several Kodachrome slides at the Santa Fe diesel service facility in Emporia, KS. Around the clock there was something always going on there. Of course, nobody called it by that way-too-official sounding name. It was mainly called the roundhouse, or just plain ‘the house’. But as I recall our facility in Emporia had a couple of other common nicknames. Depending on which yardmaster was on duty you could hear a lordly voice over the radio instructing inbound head end crews after assigning them an arrival track: “…power to the house”, “take your power to the pit” and my favorite “cut yer power and take ‘er to the barn”…

Just curious: What kind of nick name did your favorite diesel service facility have?

1. AT&SF 3642 is resting at “the barn” in Emporia, KS with the 2355 + 3 more unknown B-Bs from Uncle John’s diesel fleet.
Photo date: May 31, 1985.

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels
santafe199



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/22 23:33 by santafe199.

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Those WERE good times back then.

Not that it was my favorite, but it was always interesting to hear the Conrail diesel shop at Collinwood Yard in Cleveland, OH referred to as "The P1a," after the class of electric locomotives it used to service back when there was wire between Collinwood and Lynndale.

I preferred hearing "everything through but the crew".
JB

3rdswitch Wrote: > ... "everything through but the crew" ...
For radio-instructed mainline depot crew changes we had some of those, too: "Touch & go at the depot", "Tippy-toe at the depot" and my personal favorite with that deep & lordly baritone voice I described up above:
(full treatise) "Bring 'er up the eastbound main, step on 'n off at the depot, plee-sir!"

Those were the days! (Archie Bunker -1971)