I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole tonight. For some reason I found myself looking at things in the area of Beaumont, KS. For those that are not familiar, Beaumont sat on the main line of the Wichita Subdivision and the northern end of the Beaumont Subdivision. After looking around a bit online I cannot find much information on the setup here. There would have been a roundhouse here to service locomotives working the Beaumont Subdivision, but I cannot find any ground level photos of the roundhouse or the turntable. I did find it in an old aerial photo dated 1956, snapshots attached. Anyone know of any photographs of this setup?
Ethan, The turntable at this station had a short life. It was only 60' long, manufactured by King. It was out of service and removed by 1926. By this date steam locomotives had mostly outgrown its short length. Beaumont had a wye around the small interchange yard and limited facilities at this station. This gave the railroad the ability to turn locomotives, doodlebugs or motorcar gas electrics and other equipment. With a very limited number of trains on the Beaumont subdivision and a very small engine house the turntable was considered redundant. Therefore, it was not replaced due to cost, limited need or use. A couple of turnouts were then used to access the roundhouse stalls. There is a track schematic in the forums, Operations tab, Wichita Subdivision. Over time the small yard continued to be reduced in the number of tracks. The bulk of the population centers, industries and customers were on the southern portion (Winfield, Arkansas City, KS and Blackwell, OK) of the Beaumont Subdivision. Therefore, the traffic was largely routed south to the larger yard and company facilities at Enid, Oklahoma. You might find the following link helpful for plats and photographs. Please see http://www.frisco.org/shipit/index.php?threads/beaumont-ks.1372/. Hope this helps. Thanks! Mark
