Roundhouses in Roanoke - Photos of Demolition at SX

Tue Sep 24 17:35:39 EDT 2019

Comrade Garnerovsky (alias Yanos) sure causes a lot of trouble.  He completely interrupted Turnip production here on the Plantation today.  People in New York probably won't have Turnips tomorrow because of the way he distracted me today...

Anyway, for what they are worth, here are my photos taken about the time the southwest half of the SX Round House was undergoing demolition.  The dates are built into the file names.

These negs were scanned several years ago, not edited in any way, and saved as TIFFs.  So today, I edited them for levels, brightness and contrast, and touched out a few of the worst scratches.  So, they ain't magazine-cover quality yet, and need more work.  The Hon. Mr. K. Millerstein, Universal Graphologist Extraordinaire, just LOVES spending his time touching out scratches and dust, so if he ever wants the TIFFs I will send them and he can spend a week mousing-out all them-thar dern little specks.  HA!

Since Yanos is a "good customer," I made his package a Baker's Dozen and threw in a couple extra images from Days-of-Yore, taken in what was called the "North Hump Shanty."  In one photo, Conductor Charlie Coffee  sits at the north-side hump signal controls with a teletype list in his hand.  In another photo, Shaffers Crossing Yard Master Charlie Milam is at the desk, and Terminal Train Master Dick Ewers is seated at another desk, with his back to the camera.  EVERY boss, whether Tin-Horn Straw Boss or Blue Blood Boss-Man, wore hats back in those days. It was the badge by which we working stiffs recognized men of superior quality.  Two more views made that day look out the rear window of that shanty, towards the Round House which, by this time, had been partially razed.

All the rubbish from the Round House demolition was loaded into side-dump gondolas.  I have no idea where it went for dumping, but I sure dumped enough of those cars down river banks while in work train service over the years.

I do not recall whether these photos were taken with a Konika range-finder camera (with a razor-sharp lens for a cheap, second-hand, starter camera,) or the Asahi H-5 Pentax I picked up in the early 1960s.  The next step up was a Leica M-2, but the Leica was not on the scene yet when these present photos were snapped.  The grainy images in this packet of photos were taken with nasty old Tri-X film (ASA 200, as I recall, later raised to 400) which was created for newspaper photographers and really was a misfit at any other task you gave it.  The better of the photos herein represented were made with Pan-Atomic X, ASA 32, a slow but perfect film.

If you look closely, you will see the N&W's first three stinky Dismals in these photos: the 300, 301 and 302.

Joe Byrum, the well-known much-liked N&W (and VGN) railroad detective, was up at the Hump the day these photos were taken, and somewhere I have his photo, too.  What a prince of an individual Joe was - a Southern Gentleman in every way.  God rest his soul.

Cheers from Retirement-Ville (which is right down the road from Turnip Town...)

     -- abram burnett,

derailed old brakesmun

Moderators Note: Look for the full size images in an upcoming Arrow. These have been sized to make them more palatable to list mailing!

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