The Roundhouse

The Roundhouse. . , No Rear View Mirrors , Decade after decade, the Roundhouse played a critical role in Barrie's economy by servicing transcontinental passenger train travel in all directions from the Allandale Train Station. Railway steam locomotives were moved from the main line to the Roundhouse for repairs. Since the huge engines ran backward so slowly, the engineering genius of a roundhouse was that locomotives weighing several tons could be easily rotated on a turntable of tracks and moved forward into stalls for maintenance and storage. , Flaming Disaster , Imagine being called out on a freezing early morning in January to fight a mass of flames at the old Northern Railway roundhouse. It was 1887 and the Allandale Fire Brigade and the Barrie Fire Brigade together could not save the 1870s roundhouse, with its carloads of wood and three locomotives inside. Incredibly, the newly built roundhouse burned again the following year in July. The rail yard could not function without a roundhouse, so yet another roundhouse had to be built. , Solid Concrete , Work started in 1903 and, this time, the Grand Trunk Railway chose to use the newly available building material of poured concrete. , 27 Steam Locomotives , It took many men to build the new roundhouse which could service up to 27 steam locomotives at a time. The 21.3m (70 foot) turntable in the centre was operated by air motor tractor. A Foreman's office, tool room, air brake testing department and accommodations for the electricians was also added. , Demolition , The introduction of diesel engines, plus the decline of rail traffic through Allandale, resulted in the roundhouse closing in October 1958. The building was demolished in 1964, leaving only the concrete footprint in memory of its working days.