Bob Julian Roundhouse & Turntable
This year, the NC Transportation Museum celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Bob Julian Roundhouse. In February 1924, Southern Railway officials announced plans to demolish Spencer’s original 15-stall roundhouse built in 1896 along with the obsolete 60-foot-long turntable. In its place they would construct a massive 37–stall roundhouse with a 100-foot turntable that could accommodate more modern steam locomotives. The new roundhouse consisted of concrete and brick around a steel frame. The steel slab roof had a top layer of tar and gravel that was pierced by a “smoke jack” over each stall. These smoke jacks allowed ventilation of the coal smoke from the steam locomotives. An arc-shaped clerestory admitted natural light.
Each of the 37 stalls had a depth of 106 feet, long enough to house the Southern’s largest steam locomotives. Nine of the stalls were equipped with pits and drop tables for changing wheels, which were rolled to and from the wheel shop through doors in the back wall. In stalls not used for changing wheels, a shallow pit ran between the rails for most of the stall’s length, allowing workmen to get under the locomotives.
In an unusual action, the company named the new roundhouse in honor of Robert L. “Bob” Julian, a long-time roundhouse foreman who began working at Spencer in 1897, only one year after it opened. A plaque high on the building’s end wall bears his name. While the building’s official name is the Robert Julian Roundhouse, it is often referred to on signs and in publications as the Bob Julian Roundhouse.
Bob Julian stands in front of a Southern Railway diesel locomotive in 1946. During his 52 years of service, he spent 20 years as the roundhouse foreman and later became the chief locomotive inspector until he retired in 1949. The roundhouse built in 1924 was named after him by Fairfax Harrison, then president of Southern Railway.
A circa 1910 postcard shows Spencer Shops original 1896 roundhouse. With only 16 stalls it was not able to meet the demand of Spencer Shops and was torn down to make room for a 37 stall roundhouse in early 1924. (HS.2009.114.14)
An aerial view of the Bob Julian Roundhouse from the late 1940s shows a busy Spencer Shops during the transition from steam power to diesel power. A second turntable, constructed to assist with the ever increasing need to service steam locomotives, can be seen to the right.
A photograph taken from the roof of the Bob Julian Roundhouse shows the 100 foot turntable, which is still in operation today. The turntable, used to get locomotives in and out of the roundhouse, replaced a smaller one which was no longer able to fit all of Southern Railway’s locomotives on it. Image courtesy of the State Archives of North Carolina (N_78_2_48)
The Turntable
Unlike diesel locomotives that run equally well in either direction, most steam locomotives were designed to pull trains in only one direction, which meant that they often needed to be turned to face in the direction they would leave the adjacent Spencer Yard. Thus, the center of the roundhouse was a new 100-foot turntable, and all roundhouse tracks radiated from it, including some known as garden tracks.
The turntable, which rotated 360 degrees about a central spindle, was also supported at each end by wheels rolling on a circular rail in the floor of a 101-foot-diameter concrete pit. Designed by the railway’s engineering staff and fabricated at Spencer, the new turntable was similar to a deck-plate-girder bridge. It was powered by two 25-horsepower alternating current electric motors. Wooden walkways with metal handrails extended along both sides of the track, and a small cab at one end enclosed the simple controls.
The Southern Railway spared no expense in constructing the Robert Julian Roundhouse and turntable. The estimated final cost of the project, completed in December 1924, was approximately $500,000.
Roundhouse Restoration
With most of the Spencer Shops complex closed and abandoned by 1977, the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources proposed the concept of creating a museum at the site that would focus on the state’s transportation history. The Southern Railway found the concept attractive and donated most of the old back shop and its land to the state for the project. After the completion of Linwood Yard two years later, the company donated the remaining buildings and 57 additional acres of land.
The Department of Cultural Resources (now the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources), along with a non-profit support organization, the North Carolina Transportation History Corporation (now the North Carolina Transportation Museum Foundation), began the long task of finding the funds needed to restore and rebuild the shops, as well as locate historic items for display. While some critical work was done soon after acquisition that enabled the North Carolina Transportation Museum to open in 1980, the funds needed for renovation were slow in coming. Area volunteers stepped in to do all they could, contributing thousands of hours to the effort.
Workers examine the roundhouse in preparation for its renovation in the early 1990s.
The Bob Julian Roundhouse today stands as a focal point of the North Carolina Transportation Museum. The largest still functioning roundhouse in North America, it currently houses some of the Museum’s rolling stock as well as exhibits.
The Bob Julian Roundhouse has hosted many special events, including the 2014 Streamliners At Spencer, which featured numerous streamlined locomotives from across the country.
Restoration finally began on the Bob Julian Roundhouse and Turntable in 1994, with the help of grants and funds from the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). Also, a fundraising campaign called “Building on the Past, Looking to the Future” showcased the museum’s role as an economic tool, resulting in a large number of public donations to the roundhouse project. In the end, the North Carolina Transportation History Corporation, state government, individuals, corporations, and foundations pumped some $8 million into the project to revitalize the roundhouse, the turntable, and other areas of the museum. As work continued through 1995, state officials awarded the project an extra $1.6 million. The revitalization of the roundhouse and turntable was completed in September 1996.
The museum and its collection have continued to grow and develop, while equipment used on the museum’s on-site train ride are maintained in the roundhouse. The Bob Julian Roundhouse now features an orientation gallery, rolling stock on display, an aviation gallery including a full-sized replica of the Wright Brother Flyer, a Spencer worker exhibit in the former washrooms where workers once cleaned up, the office where employees received work orders, over 8,000 square feet of exhibit space, the still-active stalls where visitors can view volunteers working on the museum’s rail equipment, and the completely restored 100-foot turntable. Rides on the turntable are available, but locomotives still have priority.