Re: What warrants a depot

Posted by Keith Hayes on Mar 31, 2019; 5:16pm
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/What-warrants-a-depot-tp13700p13730.html

Studying the timetable, all points are listed as 'stations.' This includes both Dickey and Frisco as well as other points, like Boreas, that have no formal depot structure. I have to support Espee on this point: a station is a place and a depot is a structure. I wonder if this is a holdover or shorthand for the surveying term, "station point," which is the tick located at intervals to denote distance along a path?

The structure at Alpine was really more for train orders, as only railroad employees would get off there, and the same goes for Boreas, I guess. Though it had the stone engine house/ roundhouse, I don't recall a depot, just the log section house which survives. I believe Kenosha had a depot, but this was gone in later years.

The C&S was not terribly good about building depots, or at least making them last. For example, Climax (Fremont Pass) generated considerable revenue in later years, and the section house stood in as the depot. I guess Leadville served as the Agency to generate all the traffic from this point? Breck also had considerable traffic, and got a depot, but it was not in the best shape at the end of operations. I guess you could say that about the whole railroad. Compared to the D&RGW with the many clapboard and shingle structures and their graceful eaves, the C&S had much more austere depots (Como, Dillon and Breck), with only a handful like Jefferson and Leadville standing out as being 'fancy.' Oh, and Kokomo.

This may be what draws us all to model the C&S--this random consistency to surprise with the unexpected and juxtapose small consolidations and their Ridgeway spark arrestors with modern steel-framed wood rolling stock.