On Tuesday we decide to go to the Round House Museum in Savannah, easy parking and as we pulled in this big steam engine greeted us. It was a nice cool day, in the mid 70's with little humidity.
Note in the next picture why they called it the roundhouse, - - - - because it's round!
The roundhouse was used to repair locomotives either overnight with light repairs or major repairs, these are done in different bays of the roundhouse. Light repairs were done in an area of the shop where the locomotive could be kept running; there are smoke hoods in the ceiling to let the exhaust escape. This structure was built in 1855 and is 250 feet diameter. There were 34 stalls, each 138 ft. long and each have a 3 to 4 ft. deep maintenance pit.
The turntable in the center is for rotating locomotives and rolling stock to the proper location to be moved into a repair stall in the roundhouse. This turntable was in the Columbus, Ga. repair shop and was moved here in 1907 and expanded to it's current length of 85 feet.
We were able to ride an observation car onto the turntable and rotated to tracks, with an exit and entrance onto the turntable to see how it workers.
We had the opportunity to tour two executive cars, almost like our RV, with everything except we don't have a cook or a porter. I guess that would be me! LOL
This car was refurbished to it's 1956 condition in 2003 by the Coastal Heritage Society here in Savannah. The car is very well done with an executive lounge, bedrooms, baths, dining room with kitchen and offices. As you can see from the next pictures.
This was the lounge and it had phone land lines to use while stopped in a station and radio phones, hanging on the wall, to use during transit.
This is the dining room with the actual china that they used, stored in the cabinet. We went through two executive cars.
This is what they start out with when doing restoration of a coach. Looks like quite a job, but I think it would be fun to do. The Coastal Heritage Society of Savannah does a lot of this restoration at this museum site, building much from scratch because parts are no longer available.
This Caboose was open, so I took a picture of this bird house.
I think this would have been a fun job!
Hey guys at S.E.S., do you recognise this coupler?
We were also able to look in the repair shop area of the roundhouse. They were working on this passenger car
Blacksmith Shop
A line shaft driven set of tools, lathe and more. There was a hydraulic hammer for big work as well. They also had their own print shop!
The smoke stack was used to divert smoke from various areas of the facility through underground tunnels. primarily the boiler room. The bottom housed privies and changing rooms. After the roundhouse was no longer in use, some citizens of Savannah, noticed the smoke stack shrinking. When the brick was worth a lot of money for restoration here in Savannah, would you climb that thing to steal and sell those brick? They had to replace about a third of it. All I can say for those taking the brick, WHAT A BUNCH OF IDIOTS!
History of this facility: The Central of Georgia Railroad & Canal Co., chartered in 1833, for the purpose of moving Georgia cotton to Savannah was in competition with Charleston. It served as a rail facility for the Confederate military, but Sherman tore up most of the rail from Atlanta to Savannah and wrapped the heated rails around trees.
In 1866 William Wadley became president and widely expanded this company from 290 miles of track to over 1500 miles of new track. During the first part of the 1900's it expanded and was the largest employer in Savannah. During the depression, falling on hard time, it survived to later be abandoned in 1963.
In 1989 the Coastal Heritage Society took over the property and it has been growing as a museum since then, with a bright future for Savannah.
This is a short synopsis of this museum, but a must see!
We will be traveling on, so stay tuned and God Bless.
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