The “Roundhouse", The Machine Shop and the “Car Knockers Shed”
These buildings were at the heart of the Red River & Gulf RR, and the Crowell's lumbering operations. The engine house, which was known as the "roundhouse" despite its shape, was where the locomotives were kept arid basic servicing between runs was performed. In the Machine shop, major repairs were performed, and parts made for almost everything used by the railroads, the woods operations and the sawmill.
The Machine Shop appears to have been built before 1912, as it shows up on a valuation map from that year. The Engine House shows up on a 1921 valuation map as a 3 track facility, but it is not in pictures taken in 1916, so it way probably built in the 1919-20 expansion. By the early 1920's it had been rebuilt as a 4 track engine house, and remained as such until the end of the railroads in 1954. At various times, similar engine facilities existed at Alco, Hutton, Sieper and Meridian to service the locomotives and equipment assigned to those lumber camps and sawmill towns. In 1949, the present engine house on this site was destroyed by a "cyclone" and was rebuilt using the framing and sheeting salvaged from the Hutton and Alco facilities in 1944 and 1945. That is why, if you look carefully, the bolt holes on the side steel sheets, don't exactly match where they need to be today.
Behind the Machine Shop is the parts house, and finally the car shop, known as the "Car Knocker's Shed". It got that name because the railroad term for the workers who built and repaired the log cars and other railroad cars was "Car Knocker". In the car shop, all of the Crowell's wood log cars were built and rebuilt as needed, and the other cars such as cabooses, passenger cars, and other specialty cars were maintained. The car shed was also built in the 1919-20 expansion , but the present structure is a restoration done by the museum in 2005, as the old shop had basically collapsed upon the equipment stored inside.
Presently, most of the machinery in the Machine shop is operational, making it one of the very few functioning belt driven machine shops remaining in the United States. In addition, Meridian Lumber locomotive #202 is stored inside the Machine shop. In the Car Knockers Shed are stored Red River and Gulf locomotive #106 and an almost completed log car, which was being built when the logging RR shut down in 1954.