The No. 2 Coachshop

Above is a picture of a No. 2 Coach Shop when it was under construction, to the east outside of the fence surrounding the shops you can see tents were the construction workers lived. It looks like there is a gate where the workers could access the construction site of the structure. The shop has 15 bays to work on the CPR's fleet of passenger coaches; the structure with the smoke coming out of its chimney is a temporary structure that was probably used by the construction engineers and draftsmen. To the east of this building and past the railway gondola to the end of shop, a transfer table was built. Coaches entering the shop came onto the table on the center track where the gondola is sitting, and from there the transfer table traveled on rails to any doorway, and the coach would be moved in to the shop for its overhaul. The coaches would be stripped of paint, and seats would be removed for reupholstering, and any other repairs would be done to the running gear and air brakes. The coaches would be repainted, and refurbished, and moved out of the shop on the transfer table to return to service. At the time I worked at Ogden, the passenger era was in its twilight, many passenger trains were abolished, for lack of business. The automobile and airlines had taken their toll on these trains, and many jobs were lost.

I have posted some pictures of a transferred table I took at Ogden, Utah in 1999. This transfer table was attached to a Southern Pacific locomotive shop that was about to be torn down, not much left just the rusted rails and tumbleweeds. The two small steam locomotives were being loaded onto flat cars and shipped to Arizona. You can see by the amount of wheels, and rails, this was a heavy-duty transfer table for the Southern Pacific's big steam locomotives.