Re: DSNG Roundhouse fire

The attached photo is a memento of the roundhouse fire. I was working at the D&S as a machinist at the time of the fire. The Brown & Sharpe wooden case held my 6" dial caliper, and was stowed in my locker in employees' locker room attached to the south side of the roundhouse. The locker room was not destroyed by the fire, but the fire left its mark. The rectangular marking on top of the Brown & Sharpe box is where my 6" steel rule was laying. The other marks are from my safety glasses and a pencil that were also on top of the box.

By the time of the fire, the machine shop had been greatly improved over what it had been in the spring of 1981. We had several new (OK, used, but of recent manufacture) machines, including a really nice Bridgeport Series II vertical milling machine. The morning after the fire, the spindle head of the machine, which was largely made of aluminum, lay as a solidified puddle of aluminum on the mill table. Brass bar stock in the stock rack, softened from the heat of the fire, sagged like spaghetti. Virtually all the machine tools in the shop were hauled off as scrap. The only one that survived was a home-made link grinder that I was putting the finishing touches on.

Picking through the ashes of that fire in the following days was one of the most depressing things I have ever experienced.

Mark