(The following story by Peter Marteka appeared on the Hartford Courant website on June 6.)
WILLIMANTIC, Conn. — Sometime between 1927 and 1935, the original Columbia Junction roundhouse was torn down and bulldozed into the six pits where steam locomotives were once repaired and stored. The turntable that spun the locomotives into one of the roundhouse’s six bays was later scrapped to feed the blasts furnaces of World War II.
In a steady drizzle Wednesday, Andover resident Robert Hassett backed a hand rail car out of one of the bays of the rebuilt roundhouse, its squeaky fingernails-on-chalkboard wheels coming to a halt in front of a hand-operated “armstrong” turntable. Nearby, Jeffrey Laverty pushed a large handle spinning the turntable to a halt in front of the main tracks. With a mist hanging heavily in the air, the two railroad structures seem to be ghosts of Columbia Junction’s past.
But for a group of 70 men and women from the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum, the roundhouse and turntable are real. Since 1991, the all-volunteer group of railroad enthusiasts has been preserving the railroad history of eastern Connecticut in the former New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad freight yard — known as Columbia Junction — off Bridge Street. According to museum officials, the restored turntable and roundhouse are one of only a few working combinations in the United States.
On Sunday, the group will dedicate its restored 60-foot armstrong turntable during an event called “The Turn of the Century.” For the first time since the roundhouse was originally abandoned in the early 1900s because locomotives became too big, the group will spin an engine and drive it into the semicircular brick building. The group said it will be a “coming out party” for a restored Maine Central rail bus that has been “landlocked” in the roundhouse and a 25-ton locomotive known as “Lil’ Tugger.”
“The restoration is a sort of centerpiece for our grand plans out here,” said Mark Granville of Mansfield, president of the group. “Our first big accomplishment was rebuilding the roundhouse on its original foundation. It’s all taken a long time and a lot of blood, sweat and tears.”
The restoration plan began when a member of the group found a similar turntable bridge in the middle of a field at the Edaville Railroad in South Carver, Mass. The iron bridge was built at the turn of the 20th century by Boston Bridge Works for the Providence, Webster & Springfield Railroad yard in Dudley, Mass.
The bridge and ring rail it spins around on were transported to Willimantic in 1994 where they sat for seven years as members worked on laying track, refurbishing engines and cars and restoring the roundhouse. In 2001, member Bruce Marcus helped purchase a new bearing, and a crane was brought in to put the 15-ton turntable bridge into the original pit and granite support slab next to the roundhouse.
“My first time I went there, I saw these middle-aged guys slaving over putting down track,” said Marcus, owner of a Manchester communications company and model railroad enthusiast. “But I was hooked. It’s like a full-sized model railroad with big toys. There’s a lot of clever guys putting it together.”
Over the next six years, countless man hours were put in on Saturdays to straighten the bridge, replace deteriorated pieces and remove protrusions at both ends of the bridge. Stones in the pit were restored and the ring rail was installed. A concrete pad was poured to support the ring rail. Each tie had to be cut and sized for a specific position on the bridge.
The rocker assembly, which sits on top of the bearing the bridge is suspended on, presented a huge challenge. The central cylinder was “frozen” in place and could not be budged for two years. Finally in 2006, the rocker body and cylinder were separated by a Worcester, Mass. company using a press that applied 110 tons of pressure. The steel cone the bearing and rocker sit on was moved into position and was bolted down. Tracks were laid to the turntable and into the roundhouse.
“We did it the old-fashioned way,” Hassett said. “All with picks and shovels. The whole site is original, we are just re-developing it. … This was the place to be for trains early on. Then everything got too big and heavy for the area.”
The armstrong turntable got its name because a locomotive could be spun by two men (and $60 worth of grease) pushing a bar at both ends.
“Once it gets going, it’s hard to stop. Inertia, you know that other force in the universe,” said Hassett as he struggled to stop the bridge during a demonstration.
For nearly a century, Willimantic was a major railroad hub in Southern New England. In the early 1900s, 50 trains came through Willimantic every day. The museum located along the former Air Line railroad includes an 1872 station from Chaplin a 1900s freight house from Groton, a 1920s telegraph operator’s shanty from Versailles, Conn., and a section house from Willimantic as well as dozens of engines, cars and cabooses.
“Right now we are consumed with the physical stuff of building a museum,” Granville said. “It’s tough physical work. But you look around at how the place is shaping up and, yeah, it’s all worth it.”
The museum will open at 10 a.m. Sunday with the dedication ceremony taking place at 1:30 p.m. At 3 p.m., the public will get an opportunity to operate the turntable.