The " Roundhouse," once a integral part of railroading now a mere memory of what was once great. The roundhouse served the function of storing steam engines originally in a series of stalls. The stalls were in a semi circle that was fed by a turntable. The turn table was a device that allowed an engine to drive onto it, then the table would turn to what ever stall was it was required to go to. In the photo you can see the doors to stalls # 28 & 29 have been torn down. The object to the right and across the foreground is the turntable. The tower structure that straddle the turntable had an electric box on it that fed current to a motor under the turntable. At one end of it there was a small shanty where the operator would sit and move a lever that allowed the table to turn and face a stall so the engine in question could move off the table and into the stall for service. The roundhouse in the photo was once the " Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo " railroad or affectionately known as either " Tramps, Hobo's & Bums," or " To Hell & Back," RR. The building in question was put up in 1929 at the start of the " Great Depression." It served the T. H. & B., the New York Central & the Michigan Central RR. it was an innovative railroad that developed the concept of " ready steam " through a series of pipes that ran from the boiler plant behind it to the various stalls and could be plugged into any steam engine. The purpose of this was that instead of " banking the fires " of the engine and letting them be cold, steam was fed to the engine so that within a few short minutes steam was up and the engine ready to roll. Prior to that any steam engine that had banked fires, it would take up to 30 minutes to get steam up to get rolling where as this way, with in 5 to 7 minutes the engine was ready to go, a great time and money saving idea to a railroad where time is money. There was a move afoot to preserve the round house but the owning railroad at the time didn't see it that way and it was demolished as was the turn table. The land was sold & cleaned up and is now a series of row houses, populated by people who probably for the most part have no conception of what was once on the land they now live and play in.............thanks for the peek