Roundhouse Railroad Museum in Savannah, Georgia

[pH]

I visited the Roundhouse Railroad Museum in Savannah, Georgia last week. It’s housed in the old Central of Georgia Railway shops complex, which is designated as a National Historic Landmark District and is thought to be the oldest and largest nineteenth-century railroad operations complex still existing in the US. The Central of Georgia was absorbed by the Southern Railway, which in turn became part of Norfolk Southern. There’s a large roundhouse, with a still-operational turntable, plus several other original buildings.

 

 

The most noticeable thing in the site is the single chimney used for all the fires, furnaces etc. in the complex:

 

 

Many of the stalls in the roundhouse are used for restoration work, and so are off-limits to visitors, and the layout of a roundhouse can make it difficult to get good pictures of exhibits, but here are some of my efforts.

 

There were two locomotives outside the roundhouse, in front of the turntable. The first was a 2-8-0 steam loco, built for the Central of Georgia in 1907, and later transferred to a subsidiary – the Wrightsville and Tennille (I just love the names of some of these smaller American railroads!).

 

 

The other engine out front was a Savannah and Atlanta GP35. The S&A was also absorbed by the Southern Railway and this loco is painted in Southern colours. Note the switcher trucks.

 

 

The other engines in the museum are all small switchers, both steam and diesel. Here’s an Alco 0-4-0T, last owned by Georgia Power. (I think the paint scheme is only an ‘as preserved’ one).

 

 

The next, an 0-6-0T, was built as a tender locomotive, then converted to a tank loco and used as the works switcher at Macon Shops. Note the metal mule ornament on the smokebox:

 

 

The largest diesel switcher in the museum was the first one purchased by the Central of Georgia, in 1939 (this picture shows some of the difficulty of taking photos in a roundhouse):

 

 

The last engines were a couple of GE 44-tonners, brought to the museum from the Claremont Concord Railroad. One was originally built for the US Army:

 

 

The other was first used on the Boston and Maine:

 

 

There is some coaching stock in the museum. The oldest one in running order was built as a passenger car for the Central Railroad and Banking Company (an earlier name of the Central of Georgia) in 1878, and later converted to an inspection car:

 

 

The only other car that I could get a reasonable shot of in the roundhouse was a Central of Georgia office car, originally a Pullman Company parlour car:

 

 

There was a CofG baggage car outside:

 

 

And here’s a shot of an older coach under renovation, taken through a roundhouse window:

 

 

A couple of freight cars – an Atlantic Coast Line caboose, not yet fully restored:

 

 

and a Seaboard Air Line boxcar, built in 1934:

 

 

There are two operating model railroads in a building at the museum, built by a local model railroad club – one HO, and one N scale. They’re operated by the kind of sensor used to switch lights on and off automatically in little-used rooms. As you step in front of the layouts, they start up. When you leave the room, they run for a short time longer, then shut off. A surprise in the railroad club rooms was this advertisement:

 

 

And certain areas in the museum can be rented for private functions. While I was there the former blacksmith’s shop was being decorated for a party happening later in the evening:

 

 

Overall, a nice museum, as interesting for the buildings in which it’s housed as for the exhibits themselves.

 

One final picture, not of anything in the museum, but of the streetcar that runs along River Street in downtown Savannah. This is a car from Melbourne, converted to hybrid drive with a generator burning biodiesel.

 

[dave1905]

The S&A 2715 isn't on switcher trucks, they are AAR type B road trucks, used on Alco, Baldwin and GE locomotives. They were probably trade-in's from Alco's.

 

The ACL caboose looks like it was rebuilt from a boxcar. Note the stiffening rib under the center.