Fort Wayne, IN: NYC Coaling Tower, Turntable, and the Circus Comes to Town

(Update: the freight house has its own notes)

Mike Snow posted

Mike's comment:

Fort Wayne Indiana across the street from the City Power & Light Plant (now Science Central)
6397, 6341 is a USRA type 2-8-2 (H-6 Class on the NYC). For most of the later steam era on the Fort Wayne Branch, older H-5, 2-8-2s were the usual power but some of these USRA types showed up toward the end of steam. (In quantity, the H-5 Mikados were the largest group of engines the NYC had and the very last steam run on the Big Four was an H-5.)
The Mikado type was, in turn, ousted from the top-flight trains by larger freight locomotive wheel arrangements such as the 2-10-2, 2-8-4, 2-10-4 and articulated locomotives, but no successor type became ubiquitous and the "Mike" remained the most common road freight locomotive with most railroads until the end of steam. More than 14,000 were built in the United States, about 9500 of these for North American service, constituting about one-fifth of all locomotives in service there at the time. The heaviest Mikados were the Great Northern’s class O-8, with an axle load of 81,250 pounds.
Almost all North American railroads rostered the type, notable exceptions being the Boston and Maine, the Delaware and Hudson, the Cotton Belt and the Norfolk and Western. The largest users included the New York Central with 715 locomotives, the Baltimore and Ohio with 610, the Pennsylvania Railroad with 579, the Illinois Central with 565, the Milwaukee Road with 500 and the Southern with 435.

Since this yard is the terminus of a NYC branch, it has a smaller coaling tower than the ones we have been seeing over mainline routes.

Tommy Lee Fitzwater posted
Old Power Plant Fort Wayne Indiana probably late 1930's
[Note the NYC yard and freight house on the right.]

Satellite

The yard was north of 4th Street and west of Clinton Street. You can clearly see the "black line" on the satellite image where the mainline went through the yard and then turned to go around Spy Run Creek. The circus used this yard for unloading its train when it visited the city (FortWayneRailroad). The turntable in the yard is visible in a 1951 aerial image. When Fort Wayne Train Stations was written, the NYC Freight House (visible in the lower-right corner of the above 1951 link) was still standing. But the satellite image shows that it has been torn down to make a bigger vacant lot. Evidently they got it torn down before the 2008 recession hit. Whatever the planned development was, it is a shame they did not give some thought as to how to repurpose the building, say as a community center. Once again, I use the Bird's Eye View as a time machine to locate the building.

Bird's Eye View

The History Center posted
[Note the shadow of the coaling tower.]

Tommy Lee Fitzwater posted
1954 - Several hundred people were on hand by 6:30 a.m. August 3, 1954, to watch the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus unload at the New York Central freight yards off Clinton Street. The crowd kept growing, and the children cheered when the car with the elephants finally arrived.
Gay RedwanskiGerbers: Watched them travel down Parnell Ave. headed to the Coliseum.....it was a special event every year.
Kathryn Neddeff: Clinton and Fourth street ! Went to watch many times we couldn’t afford the Circus.

Becky Osbun commented on Tommy's post
"Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus visited the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum in September 1977. shows elephants, camels, llamas, and horses, en route to the Coliseum." - ACPL