SVRy 1891 McEwen Turntable

I have been reading a small paperback book published in 1979 called Sumpter Valley Days by Ernest Hudspeth. Ernest was born in 1908, and grew up in the Sumpter Valley (Oregon). While the book is primarily about the lifetime he experienced there, it has a few references to the SV Railway. For a small bit of back ground, prior to the railroad reaching the Sumpter Valley proper, Thomas McEwen was in the freighting and stage coach business. He had a stage stop on Deer Crk. a mile or two below what would become the McEwen townsite. As the railroad built up the valley the terminus for initial construction was as stated a bit further up, so he moved his stage stop and the new town site would carry his name. McEwen was the end of the rail line until 1896 when the line was built on up the valley to service the mining boom then occurring in the mountains surrounding the town of Sumpter. On page 86 Hudspeth states in his book that his father had been employed by Thomas McEwen who received a contract to "turn" the SVRy engines on a turntable. This required a team of 4 horses. He says turning the engines allowed them to enter a passing track with one switch back to the mainline. I assume this must have been a crude turntable, as much larger engines than operated at that time on the SVRy were turned on "armstrong" turntables with 2 or 3 crew members providing the hp. Notice the map attached from our SVRR archives is dated 1891, but shows the actual end of track adjacent to the depot. Evidently the extension of track to the left on the map was not yet constructed, so perhaps the wye would come later as well.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2014 11:22AM by J.B.Bane.