The Care and Feeding of the Steam Locomotive

The steam locomotive has often been portrayed as a living beast, with steaming breath and a voracious appetite for coal to feed it's fires.  The steam locomotive was an intricate piece of machinery with thousands of moving parts that required constant servicing and maintenance.  To accomplish this the railroads established facilities and shops that employed hundreds of employees with specialized skills.  These shops dotted the landscapes in cities and towns across the country and Chicago being the focal point of so many railroads, was no exception.

The essential component of any servicing facility was the roundhouse.  They varied in size and number, depending on the volume of locomotives using the rail yards they operated from.  The roundhouse was a semicircular structure that surrounded a pivoting piece of track mounted on something similar to a bridge girder.  The turntable could rotate 360 degrees to line up with any track that led into an individual stall in the roundhouse.  It also allowed for the locomotive to be "turned" so that the front of the locomotive faced the desired direction pf travel.  The tender, that part of the locomotive used to store the coal to fuel it, was meant to be behind the the locomotive when it was attached to the train.

The roundhouse was used for basic servicing, such as inspection, cleaning and lubrication.  Located near the roundhouse were water tanks, coaling and sand towers.  The locomotives were moved around the servicing area by employees known as "hostlers".  The hostler would move the locomotive in and out of the roundhouse and position it to take on water, coal and sand.  Sand was critical for giving the locomotive traction on the steel rails, especially when starting the train from a standing stop.

Larger servicing facilities also included "back shops".  This collection of buildings was used for heavy repairs and rebuilding.  Many of the larger railroads modified locomotives to modernize them.  Some even had the facilities to build their own locomotives.  The back shop would include buildings with heavy duty overhead cranes used to disassemble a locomotive.  There were boiler shops where boilers were "retubed" to extend their life.  New steel tires were added to the drivers to replace the worn ones.  The final step in the heavy servicing would be a trip to the paint shop for a fresh coat.

Steam locomotives required frequent service.  Upon the return from each trip on passenger or freight the locomotive would receive the required service.  There was a prescribed maintenance schedule the railroads followed set forth by the Federal government.  Federal inspectors insured that the railroads adhered to the scheduled maintenance.  Each locomotive represented a major investment on the part of the railroad.  Many locomotives would be modified and rebuilt to extend their life and improve their performance as new technologies were developed.

All this work amounted to a huge specialized workforce: sheet metal workers, machinists, boiler makers, carpenters and so on.  The advent of the diesel locomotive changed this.  The diesel did not require the constant maintenance the steam engine did.  They could operate for longer periods of time with little more than refueling and minimal inspection.  The railroads embraced the new technology once it was shown to improve the basic bottom line of operations.  Those facilities and people that were needed to take care of and feed the great iron beasts were no longer needed.  The railroad drastically reduced their work forces and would abandon and eventually demolish the acres of buildings once dedicated to steam engines.