Section foremen were supplied with Frisco-built homes. There was a two-story one in my home town of Dixon, MO. I grew up there in the 40's-to-early 60's. The house there was occupied by a Mr. Wilson, who was foreman of the Dixon Hill section gang and had a very large family. The house was "decrepit" to say the least. For years, it had only an outhouse for a "repository." I remember it being of two-stories. I have a Frisco drawing for a one-story, four-room section house, but not of the two-story house. The drawing is titled FRISCO LINES SECTION HOUSE FOR WARM CLIMATE and was adopted Nov. 10, 1906. RMC ran drawings of a two-story CPR section house in the December 1982 issue, which included photos of six different houses, all with roof variations. Do any of you have photos showing a Frisco 2-story section house lurking in the background that you could scan and e mail me? I'd like to model Dixon for the NMRA Prototype Scene AP award. There was also a well pump house and tower at Dixon next to the section motor car shed for many years that I'll need to model, but I think I've seen a kit that should work. Thanks, Doug
I also have the diagram for the cold climate single-story section house. It featured a cellar under the kitchen accessable by a stair well from the back porch. Santa Fe's web site has several photos of similar, to my memory, two-story section houses. A few are attached.
It was about a block west on the north side of the tracks, as was the depot. There's a fascinating 1893 book available on line (thanks Google) http://books.google.com/books?vid=wisc89081524373 that has everything one would want to know about old railroad buildings. Chapters III and IV cover section houses. It even has plans for the AT&SF 2-story section house from the photos above. Now to buy a bunch of Evergreen 2x4s and other styrene and get busy. Page 267 shows the little Grisley Flats station Disney copied for the theme parks. Back to TurboTax.
My id photo (upper LH here) shows the existing building sitting where the Dixon station was located. The white "Butler" on the RH center of the photo. The old section house would have been in the background of the photo if it were still existent. It was torn down in the early 1960's.
When I was in Dixon today, I was told by several locals that this was the section house for the Frisco employees. It is huge! Two stories tall and twice as deep.
