PRR Spruce St Yards in HO Scale

Here is a 1937 Franklin map of the PRR Spruce St Yards in Columbus, Ohio. Today the Columbus Clippers stadium is just south of here and the Arena District is just off the lower right corner. I-670 partially follows the Big Four right of way behind the roundhouse.

In the 1940's though, this is where PRR had their passenger locomotive service facilities, a coach yard & repair facility, a Pullman yard & service facility, and the diner car commissary. There was also a power house and machine shop annex to the roundhouse. Freight locomotives and cars were serviced at the St. Clair Av shops which were about 2 miles east of this location at the main PRR yards in Columbus. Columbus Union Station is just under 1/2 mile east of this location.

Depending on sources and time period, the roundhouse here at Spruce St had around 36 stalls. It ceased operations starting in 1952-53 as PRR consolidated their operations over at the St. Clair Av shops in an effort to save money as PRR started to phase out steam locomotives. By 1956 the roundhouse here was torn down and the former locomotive service tracks at Spruce St were turned into the "bone yard" for steam locomotives on the way to the scrap yard. It appears PRR continued to use the coach yard facility for a few years more but as passenger operations were phased out so was use of Spruce St.

Here is my rendition of Spruce St in HO scale. It is compacted in size but not by much; I reduced the overall length and number of tracks but otherwise it is semi-scale. You can see how this fits into my overall 13' x 27' space; it nearly fills up the entire room. I'm actually OK with that though.

This could be a fully operational layout on its own without actually having to model anything else. There would be plenty of switching operations just in and out of the locomotive facilities and the coach yard and Pullman yard. The PRR mainline to Chicago and the Columbus Union Station would be staging and could connect for continuous running if so desired.

In reality, the PRR mainline to Chicago through Columbus depicted in the plan (called the Bradford Line) only saw a few trains in the 1940's - 1950's. Most of the PRR passenger trains through Columbus used the Little Miami Line which split off from CUS and ran a few hundred yards south of this location. Columbus was on the PRR Panhandle Line and most trains through Columbus were headed to Cincinnati or St Louis and used the Little Miami line to go that way.

Nonetheless, I think the above plan would make a great starting project on its own and could eventually be expanded as time & money permit. This would be a great opportunity to get my feet wet building structures and laying track, and it would be all flat so scenery would be fairly simple.