The other thread about the RR Museum of PA roundhouse proposal made me wonder about roundhouse designs.

The 3' gauge Nevada-California-Oregon moved out of Reno, Nevada, in 1917-18 and established new operational headquarters at Alturas, California. One of the new facilities constructed was an 8-stall roundhouse. This building had large glass windows on the rear and the sides.

Below is a reproduction of two Southern Pacific photos showing the roundhouse that were used in David Myrick's Railroads of Nevada, Volume 1.

How does this compare with other roundhouses built later?

I have blueprints for a Northern Pacific Ry Brick Roundhouse dated 1926.

Is that modern enough?

-Hudson

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Not in the US, but Thornaby (UK) shed was costructed on the Roundhouse pattern as late as 1958.......

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzsIK7N18fA

It lasted as a diesel depot after the end of steam in the 1960's up until about 5-6 years ago. I never saw it as a steam shed, but visited it a few times when it was occupied by diesels.

If you go to Savannah, you'll see a 1855 circular roundhouse with a 1925 semicircular roundhouse superimposed on top of it. the old house was brick and timber, the new one reinforced concrete with brick infill. The new one is larger in both diameters than the old one, easily evident when looking at the remaining bits of old wall where the two were joined. For a while, both stood together....... I wish they still did.

Moving along, I think it should be very possible to design a modern steel framed modular roundhouse structure that could be built to any desired number of stalls and in diameters to suit. If we came up with this Butler Building type concept, it could be made much more affordable, and the sheathing, fenestration and roof could be customized based on desired appearance. Just a thought..... why make everything an expensive custom reinvention of old wheels?

NKP built a new steam terminal in Calumet (Chicago) in 1951, which included a new roundhouse. And, I think the NKP roundhouse in Bellevue, Ohio was built after WW2.

Howard P.

I seem to recall someone telling me that the Wheeling & Lake Erie built a metal roundhouse toward the end of the steam era. But maybe I imagined it.

Les

Not a roundhouse, but I have always marveled at how modern this steam serving facility looked. Lehigh & New England, Penn Argyl, PA.

The difficulty with the proposed roundhouse at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania stems from the fact that the folks in charge did not care to build a structure from any standard plans which are available in the archives. Instead, they wanted spend several hundred thousand taxpayer dollars to hire an architectural firm to design a "Signature" building which might win some architectural prize, even though it might only slightly resemble an actual roundhouse.

Here in Youngstown when the Ohio Historical Society went to build the Youngstown Historical Center of Industry and Labor, they hired Michael Graves to design a "signature" building. They ended up with a structure that cost too much to build, is cumbersome, expensive to maintain and carries with it restrictions on what modifications can be made to it.

Buildings for museums should not "make a statement", they should be appealing but should not in any way take the attention away from the mission of the facility.

Industrial architecture was one of the inspirations to early Avant Garde modernists. Most of these buildings were out of public view and were unencumbered by the expectations that these buildings needed to be anything more than the most direct expression of construction technology to efficiently perform a limited set of tasks. It was "Form follows function," before Louis Sullivan coined the phrase.

One of these tasks was to use daylight to illuminate interior work spaces, so extensive windows and roof monitors were driven by necessity. Load-bearing brick or masonry were labor intensive to construct, required thick walls with arched openings, and limited window openings. Braced timber frames, iron, and steel allowed for lighter "trabeated" frames made it possible to build walls that were nearly all glass but were also susceptible to fire. By the 1920s, reinforced concrete provided comparatively fire-resistant structures that could be filled with windows.

Eventually, "cheap" energy and artificial lighting led to window-less industrial architecture, but for many decades this quest for daylight was one of the biggest factors in its design. Meanwhile, modernist architects embraced larger and larger windows as glass production technology evolved to produce affordable float glass in the 1950s. This development made it easy for most commercial buildings (like car dealerships) to have huge walls of glass that eventually made the steel sash and plate glass windows of the industrial age seem quaint.

Interestingly, the Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages were also driven by this desire to create light-filled interiors, especially since many felt that light itself was the best way to physically represent God and His power. The innovations of the pointed arch, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses were all deployed to turn the cathedral into a machine for the collection and display of light. The presence of light in these buildings was intended to be more important than the tons of stone they were made of.

This common thread of creating light-driven architecture is why the term "cathedrals of industry" is not such a stretch.

I have not seen any images of this abandoned project, and I am willing to expect that it might be truly bad, especially since the means by which firms are hired for such projects are NOT based on merit, but instead on political connections and a track record of "similar" building types (how many architects have designed railroad museums?). As far as that goes, the most recent remodeling of the entrance the RRMoPA is a travesty against railroad architectural history. It looks like something that belongs in Thomas™ set.

All of that said, I'd like to challenge the idea that the new roundhouse building must look like a historic roundhouse for reasons of historic authenticity. I would suggest that unless the building was to be an EXACT replication of a well-documented roundhouse building, then you are creating a fantasy that does not belong in railway preservation. How many of us would consider it appropriate for a railroad museum to build a new "freelance" steam locomotive with no specific prototype? I know some of the steam nerds will be quick to say "steam is steam" (and want to have all the latest bells and whistles so to speak), but it would not be preservation or history.

Furthermore, the function of this new building would be different from a historic roundhouse. The new building would be constructed to preserve and display equipment. Its needs would therefore different from an actual roundhouse, and the design may need to change to support that. I go to art museums a lot. I don't expect to see paintings displayed in recreated salons or Parisian attics, and while I appreciate that history museums are different, I think there is a place for presenting railroad equipment in a way that shows it in the best light (so to speak).

Leviathan?

Damn good steam locomotive to me for a freelance, and demonstrates more about the 1860s than pictures of locomotives in the 1860s.

I think you can design and build a structure that doesn't replicate an original exactly, but does contribute to the contextual reality of the era being interpreted. In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed legally and financially to exactly duplicate the materials and techniques.

Has anyone here seen the roundhouse in Altoona? Talk about a travesty!! So much wasted space, so expensive to heat and cool. Makes me want to barf!! (My totally uneducated opinion.)

I was not a fan of Graves, and his building unfortunately caricatured industrial architecture, but all buildings make statements, so it is better to exercise some control over what that statement is than to reject the power of architecture to support your museum.

I don't like the design, but I'll wager Graves involvement meant something to the museum's major donors.

What do you think each of these says about their respective institutions?