In recent months the people of the Martindale-Brightwood community have spoken out loud and clear about their desire not to have a data center located in their neighborhood. Despite their protestations about the data center affecting air quality and being noisy, Indianapolis civic leaders approved the development. Sadly, Martindale-Brightwood has had to cope with these concerns in the past. For over eighty years, the yards of the Big Four (Cleveland Cincinnati, Chicago, & St. Louis Railway), which eventually became the New York Central Railroad, dominated the landscape at 25th St. and Sherman Dr. The din of scrapping metal on metal and the impact thud of rail cars rolled across the community along with great clouds of dense black smoke billowing from the roundhouse as steam engines were put in readiness to join their line of freight cars. While the noise jarred nerves, soot from the smoke wafted across homes clinging to siding and speckling laundry hung out to dry. The coming of diesel engines mitigated the soot and the move of the railroad yards to Avon, Indiana dissipated the noise.
For city smoke inspectors trying to enforce abatement rules, roundhouses were “regarded as one of the hardest problems.” While in some cases the use of coke and wood to build initial fires in locomotives reduced or eliminated the problem, poorly built fires in the steam engines continued to produce noxious black plumes emanating from the chimneys over the roundhouse stalls. It was the job of the hostler, the railroader responsible for driving engines through the yards to and from the roundhouse and servicing them, to build the fire. My grandfather was a hostler at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Hawthorne Yards on the east side of Indianapolis and was proud of his ability to build an engine fire that produced little if any smoke. He was critical of those who created fires belching inky palls.
Not all roundhouses were circular; some were fan-shaped. One of the first roundhouses in Indianapolis was built in 1849 for the Madison & Indianapolis Railroad. Located on the southwest corner of South Delaware and Merrill Streets, the roundhouse once was “considered one of the largest and best buildings of this character in the West.” By 1885 the structure had deteriorated and was razed. Another early roundhouse built in Indianapolis was for the Indianapolis, Peru, Chicago Railway. The fan-shaped structure was located on the southwest corner of East Washington St. and Noble St. (College Ave.). In 1870, the Vandalia Railroad built a16-stall circular roundhouse on the near south side of the city along White River over some of the graves at the north end of Greenlawn Cemetery. When it closed in 1923, it was the last of the downtown roundhouses. Southeast of the city center at Shelby and Calvary streets, the Leota Yard roundhouse of the New York Central Railroad was fan-shaped with 38 stalls. Designed for steam locomotives, by 1957 “the giant roundhouse no longer serves a useful purpose” and was razed. On the west side stood the B & O Moorefield Yards stretching from Tibbs Ave., across Michigan St. to Belmont Ave. Its fan-shaped roundhouse stood east of the 200 block of North Belmont Ave. The Pennsylvania Railroad roundhouse at the yards between East Washington St. and Southeastern Ave. like the one at Hawthorne Yards was fan-shaped while the New York Central Railroad Brightwood roundhouse was circular with 28 stalls.
The roundhouse was the heart of a rail yard. A giant turntable directed great locomotives to stalls where they were serviced ensuring their safe passage across the nation’s rail network pulling precious cargoes of freight and passengers. Amid the yard’s web of tracks, smoke, dust, and grease, skilled mechanics toiled by incandescent torch light with hammers and wrenches, in and around the behemoths and in pits beneath, carefully inspecting the iron skin and every nut, bolt, valve, and tube, “striking the various parts to see if they ‘ring true’.” A hostler moved the engine from one inspection site to another, the boiler chemically cleaned of all corrosive minerals, an inspector crawling into the firebox examining the boiler, the testing of headlights and brakes, defects noted and repairs made. “The careful and expensive work that is conducted in the railroad roundhouses…is a saving both in human life and of money to the company.”
To an engineer, “the massive pile of lumbering iron and steel is a human being;” eating coal, drinking water, experiencing stomach troubles, the exhaust is like breathing, and the headlight provides vision. The locomotive was referred to as “she” and “her” or “the old girl” and engines carried monikers, “Nancy” and “Betsy” being favorites.
Built to service and repair steam engines, the era of the roundhouse came to an end when diesel engines replaced steam and long, rectangular buildings were more suited for modern railroads. The Illinois Central Railroad fan-shaped roundhouse, 1500 S. Senate Ave., was an example of this transition when it became outmoded and was razed in 1964. Today, all that remains in Indianapolis of these once vibrant, massive workshops are fading ghost-like shapes across the scarred ground.
Indianapolis newsman William Herschell memorialized the roundhouse in his poem, “Old Mother Roundhouse,” writing in part,
Her engine babies come and go,
Each whistles just to let her know
They’re coming home to rest and sleep –
A mother-vigil she must keep.
