Bayshore Roundhouse

Original plan for the yards and roundhouse from the Abandoned Spaces site.

I remember driving with my Dad all the time going by Brisbane, CA and seeing the old roundhouse there. Back in the days that I was a kid, there was a lot it still standing there. There was not only the roundhouse, but the actual roundtable. many (if not all) of the tracks were still there, as well as some of the other support buildings. Granted, they were still not in very good condition even when I was a kid, but at least they were there. Sadly, most of it is now gone, with only a shell of the roundhouse still standing and some bare land where some of the track used to be. 

Constructed by Southern Pacific Railroad around 1907, it was built to service primarily freight trains and consisted of not only the roundhouse and roundtable, but of 39 incoming tracks and 25 outgoing tracks, 5 new tunnels, many transfer lines, and other repair facilities. The operations there were at a peak in the 1920s, with over 3,000 people employed there and 41,918 trains having been handled by the facility by late 1921. 

By the 50s, the operations were drastically reduced with the propagation of more versatile and reliable diesel engines, but it still remained a storage facility for the diesel locomotives for Southern Pacific up until 1982. 

The story of it today is a little more depressing, as a fire had ravaged the buildings in 2001, and the land is plagued with various contamination issues that will need to be addressed. It will likely be unable to be properly cleaned up until 2028. You can see some really recent pictures from a couple years ago on the Abandoned Spaces site.

Pic by Jim Maurer – Flickr @schaffner; as seen on the Abandoned Spaces site.