The Sunbury Roundhouse

A painting, on display at the Northumberland County Historical Society, showing the roundhouse at Sunbury Pa.  The painting is dated either 1875, or 1895.

Sunbury Pa Roundhouse was located just above Packer street.   300 ft in diameter and had 36 stalls. Seven tracks entered the roundhouse through immense doorways.

Further north, up to Julia street, were the car repair shops and engine repair with seven and ten tracks each where locomotives and cars  could enter through immense doorways.

The Packer Street Overpass was a footpath  bridge covering the  tracks.  It was used by 

was used by employees to gain access to the round house and car shops.

The Philadelphia and Erie line had been extended to Sunbuy in 1863, later to become the Pennsy, and still later, the Penn Central.

William M. Schnure, a Selinsgrove historian & authority on railroad history, wrote that the Sunbury Roundhouse was built in 1872, "When the echoes of the Civil War were still heard."  Schnure recalled that the station was a beehive of activity 24 hours a day, "especially a glare at night with it's gas lights in every room and on the outside platforms."

July 1893

During the flood of 1889, 90 passengers and 15 employees were marooned in the roundhouse.

In September of 1907, Foreman C.M. Fessler of the Norther Central Roundhouse at Sunbury  secured a patent on an automatic retaining valve for air brakes that would hold the full pressure on the wheels until the auxiliary was discharged.

In the 1880's, with a rail line being build out of Shamokin to West Milton, "there followed a railroad war to get a grade crossing on Third Street, below Chestnut Street, at Penn St. It was a war of words - and action, vocal, and legal.  Finally the new road, known as the Shamokin, Sunbury, and Lewisburg Railroad, leased to the Philadelphia dn Reading, won its fight but had to assure the guarding of the crossing and junction switches with a tower (SF) perched on stilts with a sidewalk and a drive on Third street underneath.  A little Swiss chalet type station followed on S. Second St, that later was claimed to be the first electrically -lighted railroad station in the world." - Schnure

C.F. Rothermel retired from the PRR after 48 years.  A 1955 news article about his retirement mentions that he began work with the Pennsy as an engine watcher at the inspection pit below the roundhouse at Sunbury.  Later he was made house machine helper.  Rothermel recalled that in those days, he worked a 13 hour shift, six to seven days a week.  He recalls that in 1911, most of the Sunbury shop employees, including Rothermel, were transferred to Northumberland.

The Sunbury Shops closed April 13th 1925.

Aerial view of the roundhouse remains, during the flood of March 1936.

The roundhouse was razed in May 8th 1936.

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More Stories & History From Sunbury Pa

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2020/07/sunbury-pennsylvania.html

And more Stories & History From surrounding towns:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/p/history.html

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On May 13th 1967, a fire gutted two large warehouses and adjacent buildings owned by Millers Furniture Company.  The massive building, "one a Sunbury Landmark", was the former Sunbury yards "Those on the scene said flames leapt as high as 150 feet in the air at time, and were visible from all sections of Sunbury and most of Northumberland."

A year later, on  July 28th 1968, a fire destroyed the last section of the sprawling complex which once housed the Pennsylvania Railroad Car Shops and Roundhouse.  Charred Walls and a blackened metal smokestack were all that remained, according to the Sunbury Daily Item.

The building had most recently been used by Young Door Co for plywood storage.  It had been abandoned by the railroad sometime around 1911, when the classification yards, including a new roundhouse,  in Northumberland had been completed.

1967

This 1904 article, first published in the Boston Globe & later republished in the Harrisburg Telegraph, does not directly relate to Sunbury, but does describe the operations of a roundhouse.