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The subject of this page is the old Watertown railroad roundhouse, which
opened Oct. 9, 1919, abandoned 1952, torn down in summer, 1953.
The photo above is a placeholder of sorts, as it just is pointing into the woods in the general direction of where the rounhouse would have been.
If you have any photos that you have taken of the actual round house
ruins thsemselves and would like to donate them to the OABONNY site please
contact us here.
All of the following information, photos and graphics were written or
researched and compiled by Scannerman.
Through the mid-1800s, Watertown became
a valuable and crowded railroad center with The Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburg,
the Carthage Watertown & Sackets Harbor (later the Utica & Black River), and the
Potsdam & Watertown railroads building track into and in the city. The first
railroad station, "Watertown Junction", was at the foot of Stone Street where
the RW&O trains stopped before continuing through Brownville, Limerick and
Chaumont to Cape Vincent and back. Moving people and cargo to and from Lake
Ontario's busy shipping lanes and connecting to Canada and Europe was one of the
major aims of the railroads.
All three railroads eventually became the
RW&O, later to be folded into Cornelius Vanderbilt's New York Central. In 1870,
railroad roundhouses were on Coffeen Street where Verizon is now (RW&O) and
behind what is now Morrison's Furniture (CW&SH).
The New York Central
Railroad began building a massive new yard in 1918, which cut off existing
streets (West Mullin, Pine, Willow, Smith, Dorsey, Duffy, Casey and Coleman),
and made the area across from Cross and West Mullin streets up to 26 tracks
wide.
Because of the arrival of diesel engines which required much less
maintenance and trip preparation than coal-burning steam trains, the "Pine
Street Yard" was only used until the 1940s and largely demolished in the 1950s,
replaced by the present yard on outer Massey St.
The centerpiece of the
Pine St. Yard was a giant 30-bay roundhouse to repair and maintain engine/tender
combinations. 767 feet from tip to tip, the facility had concrete repair
platforms with bays underneath the engine tracks to access the bottoms. A system
of drains let boiler water drain away quickly.
While the roundhouse was
"torn down" in 1953, much of it was never hauled away and is still there. The
concrete repair aprons are still there AND the 100' diameter pit that used to
held the massive turntable to swing engines and cars to different tracks is also
still there.
No signs remain of the giant coal trestle west of the
roundhouse where railroad cars full of coal were pushed up a long ramp to one of
two tracks in the enclosed "house" on top of the huge timber structure. Doors on
the bottom of the coal cars opened, dumping coal into bins. Locomotives and
their tenders pulled along side of the trestle and chutes would fill the tenders
with coal in about a minute, then they'd move down the line to fill up with
water and sand (for traction), all in one stop.
Some area coal dealers
would also get coal there by the wagon or truckload. An old truck scale and its
scalehouse still stands at the end of Duffy Street.
Next to the
roundhouse was a power house that made all the steam, heat, cooling and
compressed air for the yard. It had its own coal trestle. That property and much
of the rest of the yard is covered by the Public Safety Building, but there are
many other remnants of the yard--if you know where to look.
Carpenter,
welding, blacksmith, electrical, plumbing, upholstery and other shops and
offices filled other parts of the yard. A track that connected Watertown with
Sackets Harbor ran along the north edge of the yard; the old railbed can be
easily traced by looking at satellite pictures of the area from Bing or Google;
you can go from behind K-Mart all the way to the big curve into Sackets.
The 100' pit for the turntable is in the woods west
of the Public Safety Building in the city's industrial park, as shown in this
Google Earth satellite photo. The lines that fan out from the pit are the
roundhouse's concrete repair aprons.
This is a picture taken of the old roundhouse looking
from the roof of the Engine House taken on October 8, 1919. The two tracks in
the middle heading away from the turntable are over the ash pit. Further in the
distance is the Coaling Trestle and the water tanks. Apparently taken from
the roof of the engine house, which was the northeast end of the round house.
A picture taken on 10/9/1919 at the Engine Terminal,
showing the coaling trestle and two 50,000 gallon water tanks.
A better view of the coaling trestle.
"Pince Street Yard" looking south from the old Arsenal
Street Bridge.
I did what I could to trace the outline of the roundhouse and it looks like five
buildings that would all be where the Verizon buildings and parking lot are now.
The wall of the roundhouse was right about out to the street.
© Copyright 2004-
OABONNY. All Rights Reserved. Site first online on July
28, 2004 
