Railroad Track Construction

This series consists of photographs of the New York Central Railroad's facilities in Cleveland, Ohio. These photographs were not submitted to the Commission as exhibits, but were mounted on cardboard and drawn on to highlight certain features of the Collinwood Yards. Collinwood Yards was one of the principal repair facilities and freight transfer points of the NYCRR. It included a brick roundhouse, built to house and repair locomotives; a machine shop, housing an engine room; a blacksmith shop; and an office constructed with upstairs apartments for the road's employees. The yards, situated along present-day E. 152nd St. just south of the Lakeland Freeway, were expanded in 1903 and again in 1929; at that time they included 120 miles of track and could handle 2,000 cars daily. In 1933 the facilities employed about 2,000 workers. By the end of World War II, the Collinwood Yards became a major switching and diesel repair facility for the NYCRR and later for the Penn Central Transportation Company.