A visit to a California roundhouse: Is there a more captivating place?

Is there, a more beautiful venue in which to repair, display, and view steam locomotives than a roundhouse? The reason I ask that that while on vacation in California earlier this month, I dropped by the state park service’s Railtown 1897 historic site in Jamestown for a brief glimpse inside the 1910 roundhouse. The former Sierra Railway wood roundhouse, clad in red-brown-painted corrugated metal and expanded in 1922, is a circular cradle for a host of engines. Standing in a convenient indentation made to get visitors close to the action, I was inside a cocoon-like structure, dark except for lights hung low from the tall ceiling, ghostly smokejacks hovering above locomotives. I saw wooden beams forming tree-like arches, and the contents, glorious work-a-day items of railroading: locomotives from the early 20^th century, one-after-another in a radial pattern; tools, parts, gloves, the trappings of workers and the machines they were there to service. It has that ramshackle feel of authenticity: A working man’s place in the best railroad tradition, ungentrified, and real.

 I let my eye wander across this locomotive garage. Sierra’s most famous locomotive, 4-6-0 No. 3, the one we all came to know either in the Petticoat Junction and Green Acres generation or the Back to the Future III generation, stood foremost and intact. Next door was Shay No. 2, an import from California’s Feather River Railway, in a state of partial disassembly with steam dome and smokebox door missing, and in the back, 2-8-2 No. 34, long laid up inside the shop. Moving around the shop, I found workers in the midst of a heavy overhaul on 2-8-0 No. 28, a prized Consolidation and workhorse on this short line turned preservation project.

 I let my nose wander too. It came across faint whiffs of oil and grease. Had one of the engines been fired up, it could have been another day on the Sierra say 70 years ago. Roundhouses have that sort of feeling: Like timecapsules from another place, they have the ability, as you walk through the door, to transport you back in time. I think it’s because there were so few roundhouses today, and their rarity lends itself to a suspension of time, place, and realty. They take us back to a day when such places were common, back to a day when steam was king.