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Spencer Shops roundtable service facility
Spencer Shops roundtable service facility

Southern Railway's Spencer Shops were a major steam locomotive repair facility between Atlanta and Washington, D.C. in Spencer, North Carolina. [1] The service facility was once Southern Railway's largest steam locomotive repair center. The period of greatest prosperity and productivity for the facitity was in the first half of the twentieth century. [2]

These type of repair service facilities for the railroads were called "back shops". They were located in every division of a railroad system and centerlized for the most extensive kinds of repairs.[2] The Spencer Shops "back shops" were named in honor of Samuel Spencer as was the name of the new town developed for these facilities.[1] [3]

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.[1] [3] It employeed between 2500 and 3000 at any one time.[4]

The former Spencer Shops were located at 35°41′13″N, 80°26′10″W near Salisbury, North Carolina. They are now phased out which took place in the 1950's to the 1970’s. [1] The conversion from steam locomotives to diesel locomotives was the demise of Spencer Shops.[4] It is now the North Carolina Transportation Museum.[3]

Contents

[edit] History

Samuel Spencer reorganized the Southern Railway Company in 1894 with a newly formed company from the defunct Richmond and Danville Railroad and several other defunct railroads. It then had two repair facilities, one in Atlanta and the other in Knoxville. Much of the inherited rolling stock from the acquisitions of the defunct railroads were in need of major repairs. The other "back shops" service centers could not handle this extensive service need. [1] These facilities were antiquated and poorly equipped as Samuell Spencer is quoted of saying. [1] Spencer seen the need for a third major "back shop" service facility on this eastern main line between Washington D.C. and Atlanta. This way the repair facilities would be divided up into segments of about 160 miles apart. The switch locomotives needed to be inspected for repair and service and refueled at this increment. The major "back shop" service facility would then be in the middle of these major cities.[3]

[edit] Secret negotiations

The development of the facilities for Spencer Shops starts with John Steele Henderson. He was a Confederate veteran, a former state senator and Rowan county's largest landholder at the time. History records that Henderson entered into secret negotiations with Southern Railroad officials for land acquisitions for the proposed major facility to act as a type of front dummy entity to prevent price speculating. He was to buy the land secretly for the new shop complex and sell it back to the railroad at or near the low price he paid. [1] It was already known in 1896 by the public that the Southern Railroad was looking for potential land for this facility and at the time the Charlotte area was seen as the logical choice for the complex. [1] It would not seem unusual for the largest county landholder to acquire more land, so this plan of using a "front" person for acquiring large parcels of land for this purpose would keep secret the real purpose from the public. Most thought anyway that the facility was going to be put in the Charlotte area so the ruse was easy to pull off. In January 1896 Henderson began buying large tracts of land two miles north of Salisbury directly on Southern Railroad's main line. He then sold most of it back to the Southern Railway for slightly more than he paid for it.[1]

Henderson did profit however from this secret arrangement. He sold land that he owned in this area to other people that worked at the shops for a large profit. He even later sold some land back to the Southern Railroad for a big profit that he had kept for himself in this secret arrangement. [1]

The shops were open for business in August of 1896. [1] [4]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k The History of the railroad and Spencer - North Carolina Transportation Museum
  2. ^ a b Workers outside Southern Railway's Spencer Shops - history of Spencer Shops
  3. ^ a b c d North Carolina Transportation Museum - History of Spencer Shops
  4. ^ a b c The North Carolina Transportation Museum at Spencer Shops

[edit] References

  • Cates, Pat C., The Southern Railway: Further Recollections, Arcadia Publishing Company (2005), ISBN 1-8830892-3-9
  • McQuigg, Jackson, History on Steel Wheels, North Carolina Transportation History Corporation (1996), ISBN 0-9642749-0-6.
  • Galloway, Duane and Wrinn, Jim, Southern Railway's Spencer Shops, 1896-1996, T L C Publishing (1996), ISBN 978-1-883089-23-9

[edit] External links

[edit] Further reading

  • "Southern Railway in Color Volume 2" by Alton Lanier. Published by Morning Sun Books Inc. ISBN 1-58248-014-1.
  • "The Southern Railway Remembered" by James Leslie Hepler, publisher Motorbooks International, ISBN 1-8830896-3-8.
  • The Southern Railway: Road of Innovators by Burke Davis, University of North Carolina Press (1985), ISBN 0-8078163-6-1
  • "Southern Railway Panorama" by Frederick A. Kramer. Published by Quadrant Press, Inc., New York, ISBN 0-9152762-0-8
  • "Southern Railway Varnish 1964 - 1979" by Ralph Ward, Original at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, ISBN 0-9622999-2-8.
  • The Southern Railway System An Illustrated History by William Webb. Published by The Boston Mills Press. ISBN 0-919783-19-8.
  • The Southern Railway Steam - Locomotives and trains 1935 - 1937 from the collection of Robert K. Durham, ISBN 0-9644480-6-8.
  • "Southern Railway in Color " by Fred Cheney and David R. Sweetland. Published by Morning Sun Books Inc. ISBN 1-878887-14-9.
  • "Southern Railway Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment" by James Kinkaid. Published by Morning Sun Books Inc. ISBN 1-878887-60-2.
  • "Southern Railway System A Pictorial Album Washington to Atlanta, 1960 - 1982" by Douglas B. Nuckles, Four Way West Publications, ISBN 1-885614-09-8.

[Category:Steam locomotives]] [Category:Defunct North Carolina railroads]] [Category:Southern Railway (US)|Southern Railway's Spencer Shops]] [Category:Defunct North Carolina railroads]] [Category:Norfolk Southern Railway]] [Category:Former Class I railroads in the United States]]