|
Southern Railway's Spencer Shops were a major steam locomotive repair facility between Atlanta and Washington, D.C. in Spencer, North Carolina. 〔(The History of the railroad and Spencer - North Carolina Transportation Museum )〕 The service facility was once Southern Railway's largest steam locomotive repair center. The period of greatest prosperity and productivity for the facility was in the first half of the twentieth century.〔(Workers outside Southern Railway's Spencer Shops - history of Spencer Shops )〕 These type of repair service facilities for the railroads were called "back shops". They were located in every division of a railroad system and centralized for the most extensive kinds of repairs.〔 The Spencer Shops "back shops" were named in honor of the first president of the Southern Railway, Samuel Spencer (1847 – 1906), as was the name of the new town developed for these facilities.〔〔(North Carolina Transportation Museum - History of Spencer Shops )〕 The original buildings included a machine shop, storehouse building, office building, wood working shop, and a combination smith and boiler shop. It even had a power plant, an automobile repair facility, and a 37-bay roundhouse where locomotives could be worked on.〔〔 It employed between 2500 and 3000 at any one time.〔(The North Carolina Transportation Museum at Spencer Shops )〕 The Spencer Shops were located near Salisbury, North Carolina. The conversion from steam locomotives to diesel locomotives caused the demise of the Spencer Shops.〔 They were phased out from the 1950s to the 1970s.〔 The former Spencer Shops complex is now part of the North Carolina Transportation Museum.〔 ==History== The financial firm of Drexel, Morgan and Company created the newly formed Southern Railway Company in 1894 following the financial failure of the Richmond and Danville Railroad system, which had included the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railroad, and several other smaller railroads. The finance company's railroad expert was Samuel Spencer, who had previously served as superintendent of the Long Island Rail Road in 1878〔(【引用サイトリンク】 format=PDF )〕〔(【引用サイトリンク】 title=The History of the railroad and Spencer )〕 and headed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (1887–1888). J. Pierpont Morgan tapped Samuel Spencer to head the new enterprise, one of the largest in the United States. The new Southern Railway began with two major repair facilities, one in Atlanta, Georgia, the other in Knoxville, Tennessee. Much of the inherited rolling stock from the acquisitions of the defunct railroads were in need of major repairs. These two "back shops" service centers could not handle this extensive service need. 〔 These facilities were "antiquated and poorly equipped and not sufficient for their purposes," Samuel Spencer said. 〔 Spencer saw the need for a third major "back shop" service facility on this eastern main line between Washington D.C. and Atlanta. He reported also in the first annual meeting of June 1895 "one additional large shop may be necessary."〔 This way the repair facilities would be divided up into segments of about apart. The switch locomotives needed to be inspected for repair and service and refueled at this increment. The new major "back shop" service facility was proposed to be in the middle of these two major cities. 〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Southern Railway's Spencer Shops」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|