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Mike Osuchowski shared St. Louis Transportation Memories's photo
Missouri Pacific roundhouse at Dupo, IL. As a young kid I remember going down Old Route 3, which is the road in the lower right corner parallelling the tracks, on the the way to my Grandmothers in Bismarck, Mo. I don't remember ever seeing the roundhouse because its view was always blocked by cars on the tracks in front of it. What I do remember is the tracks ran and ran and ran - I now know the yard is over two miles long. Even more what I remember is there was an ice house near the north end of the tracks with a conveyor belt taking big blocks of ice down a long row of cars to ice them down. |
The
bridge carrying the hump yard over the road still exists. Most of this land is now container storage and a
Union Pacific office with a yard tower. As expected, the roundhouse was easy to find on an old aerial photo. In fact, that is when I noticed the bridge for the hump yard. But I could not find the ice house and platform that Mike described.
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Tim Starr posted
The Dupo IL (Missouri Pacific) roundhouse was posted here years ago but not much info was included. At the insistence of the railroad, the original town name was shortened from Prairie du Pont to Dupo. The photograph shows the all concrete, 15-stall roundhouse that supported the Dupo Yard a short time after it was constructed in late 1907. Later photos show the two stalls closest to the photographer at their original size, while the other 13 have been lengthened by about 20 feet. The powerhouse can be seen just behind the roundhouse, while the freight car repair-in-place yard is just out of the photo on the right. Because the Dupo Yard remained an important facility, the roundhouse was kept in operation after the transition to diesel, serving both types of locomotives in the late 1940s to the mid-1950s and then only diesels until the 1970s. However, by 1985 the yard was being reduced in size, so the roundhouse was abandoned and torn down by Union Pacific. The American Roundhouse, Vol 2. (National Archives) |
A lighter exposure of the photo at the top.
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Terry B. Carlson commented on Tim's post
Found another photo of the RH from September 1949. Credits at bottom of photo. |
Was this a public road past the roundhouse?
ReplyDeleteI discovered that Google Maps labels the road to the North as State St Carondelet Ave. and Dyroff Ave. I'm not from that area, but from a satellite image I would guess it is public.
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