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Kentville Roundhouse

From DARwiki
The Kentville Roundhouse, 1959.

The Dominion Atlantic Railway's locomotives were serviced in a series of roundhouse and machine shop buildings located at the west end of the Kentville Railyard. They grew from a 3-stall engine shed in 1868 to a 6-stall roundhouse in 1915 and then a 10-stall roundhouse in 1926. The roundhouse continued to service locomotives into the diesel era until 1961 when it became a apple juice warehouse. The building survived to become one of the last railway roundhouses in Atlantic Canada. It was demolished by the town of Kentville, despite a province-wide protest in 2007.

The First Three Stall Roundhouse/Engine House 1868-1915

The Windsor and Annapolis Railway built the first turntable and engine house at Kentville in 1868 south of the mainline. It consisted of a three stall engine house[1] and a covered turntable with an attached machine shop.[2] It burned in a fire on July 8, 1915 which also destroyed two locomotives inside the sheds, No. 12 and No. 22, although firefighters managed to save the attached Machine Shop.[3]

The Six Stall roundhouse 1916-1926

A replacement roundhouse was built in 1916, north of the mainline near the Cornwallis River Bridge where DAR subsidiary the Cornwallis Valley Railway branched off for Kingsport, with a manual turntable serving the six stalls[4] as well as several outside storage tracks.

A new 70-foot turntable with a Pilling Air Motor was installed in 1920.[5] The turntable was standard CPR design for a 70 foot half deck plate girder turntable, one of 60 of this model built by the Dominion Bridge Company and the Canadian Bridge Company for the railway across Canada.[6] (A similar model served the CPR's Kettle Valley Railway and its plans can be seen online in the footnote link.)[7] The turn table was rotated by a compressed air motor located under the control platform. It would be connected to the locomotive air hose by a normal glad hand connector. The engine was moved so that the there was some weight on the air motor's wheels, and then the air cock was cracked. The air motor chuffed loudly, slipping and sliding, but eventually doing its job.

Major roof repairs were made in May 1924 after a violent wind storm blew away portions of the roundhouse roof on May 1, 1924.[8]

The Ten Stall Roundhouse 1926-1960

The roundhouse was expanded in 1926, with work being announced in March[9] with four news stalls being added.[10] The ten-stall roundhouse was complete and in use by the end of the year.[11] The new stalls filled in the storage tracks next to the Kentville Machine Shop.

The roundhouse stalls were numbered from south to north, starting with Stall No. 1 closest to the mainline and ending with Stall No. 10 near the Cornwallis River.[12] Stalls 5 to 10 were extended to accommodate arrival of Pacific locomotives in 1936.[13]

Roundhouse dimensions were:

  • South wall: 80' 6"
  • North wall: 83' 7"
  • Rear (west) wall of each stall: 27' 5" wide
  • Doors: Four south doors, 13' 4" wide, Six North Doors 13' wide. Doors separated by 10" posts[14]

The Roundhouse as Warehouse 1961-2007

Canadian Pacific moved the servicing of locomotives to the Car Shop in 1961 and stopped using the roundhouse. It was leased to the (later Great Valley Juices for use as a warehouse, although the turntable remained in use to turn locomotives and RDCs. After the railway abandoned Kentville in 1993, the turntable was purchased and moved to the New Ross area, repurposed as a bridge on a private road.[15] The roundhouse remained the last remaining railway structure in Kentville until it was demolished July 9 to 13, 2007 by the Town of Kentville to make way for a private seniors complex, despite a province-wide protest advocating adaptive re-use for the historic structure.

References and Footnotes

  1. ↑ Marguerite Woodworth, History of the Dominion Atlantic, Dominion Atlantic Railway (1936) page 64
  2. ↑ Alexander MacNab, Windsor and Annapolis Railway, Report of Alexander MacNab Nov 1, 1873, (1873), page 22
  3. ↑ "KENTVILLE HIT BY ANOTHER FIRE The D.A.R. Roundhouse and Engine Sheds Burned and Two Locomotives Destroyed", Digby Courier, July 9, 1915, Carl Riff Notes
  4. ↑ Some sources say the roundhouse started with five stalls but a tour by a Halifax journalist in 1928 indicates 6 original stalls, with four added in 1926, Halifax Herald, May 1, 1928, Carl Riff notes.
  5. ↑ Canadian Railway and Marine World, "Projected Lines, Construction Betterments, Etc. Work in 1920", November 1920
  6. ↑ "CPR Standard 70' Turntable",C.P. Tracks, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Dec. 1994), p. 16-17
  7. ↑ [http://kettlevalleymodelrailway.blogspot.com/2015/03/cpr-70-half-deck-turntable.html "CPR 70' HALF DECK TURNTABLE", KETTLE VALLEY MODEL RAILWAY , Thursday, March 5, 2015]
  8. ↑ "Kentville May 1", Halifax Herald, May 1, 1924
  9. ↑ The expansion was announced in the Kentville Advertiser March 26, 1926
  10. ↑ Halifax Chroncile Herald, May 1, 1928, Carl Riff notes. The article describes a tour by Halifax journalist who notes that four stalls were added in 1926.
  11. ↑ Halifax Chronicle Herald, Feb. 6, 1927, Carl Riff notes. Tour by Rotary group notes the roundhouse is complete and in service.
  12. ↑ Stall numbers are shown in Harold Jenkins 1927 photo and Canada Science and Technology 1943 photo of Locomotive 2511 (STR08416a).
  13. ↑ "Railway Notes", Kentville Advertiser, Oct. 15, 1936
  14. ↑ Dimensions based on onsite measurements by Dan Conlin and Leon Barron and a 1980 drainage plan of the Canada Foods plant from Graves Ltd.
  15. ↑ Personal communication with Leon Barron, 2000

External Links

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