The Piedmont Division

Roundhouse & Turntable
Renovations Project

A continuing series on the rejuvination project of the 30+ year's old Suydam Roundhouse. This kit was originally built by my dad, Joe Boudreaux, in the mid 1970's for our HO scale layout, and I have done my best to preserve the original model. This was a metal kit that required soldering of the parts for construction of the frame and walls, the roof is made of cardstock and wood. Now that I have included the structure in the plans for the new layout, it is time to begin restoring and bringing this model up to date with modern modeling techniques.

This project is now the current focus for most of my model railroading time spent on the layout, and as such the web page content has become cumbersome and has required that I now create two new pages, one for the roundhouse project and one for the turntable project. This page will be a stepping point to the more detailed work and updates for each portion of the project. As such, this page will highlight the watermark points, and current project status.

Prototype Inspiration

The inspiration for this project began some time ago when on Sunday, May 20, 2007 on our way home from a short vacation and wedding trip to Gatlinburg, TN, I took the family to visit the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, NC. (See http://www.nctrans.org/) This museum is situated on the original site of the old Southern Railway Spencer locomotive shops in Spencer, NC.

We spent a short 3 hours touring the facilities, including riding in the cab of the FP-7 Southern locomotive, and perusing the gift shop. While visiting the Robert Julien Roundhouse I took many photographs, including these of this typical inspection pit. This started the wheels a turning as I formulated a plan of action in recreating the prototype in HO scale form.

What follows is my documentation on how I tackled this project from start to finish, follow along with me as I continue to update the progress.

(Click on images for a larger view.)

Roundhouse Renovations

The roundhouse renovations page has all the details about this portion of the project. Click on the image to the right and this will jump you to the roundhouse renovations page.

Turntable Renovations

The turntable renovations page has all the details about this portion of the project. Click on the image to the right and this will jump you to the turntable renovations page.