The Roundhouse
One crucial railway building was the Como roundhouse, which was adjacent to the depot and the hotel, built in 1881 by Italian immigrants. Roundhouses are perhaps a lesser known, but significant, structure associated with the railroad industry. They provided a variety of services, but were meant primarily for service and storage.
A roundhouse is a building with a circular or semicircular shape used by railroads for servicing and storing locomotives, and usually surrounds, or is next to, a turntable. Early steam locomotives normally only traveled forward, and later locomotives often could not operate as well in reverse. Turntables allowed locomotives or other railroad rolling stock, such as freight and passenger cars to be turned around for the return journey, and roundhouses, designed to radiate around the turntables, were built to service and store these locomotives.[1]
The Como Roundhouse was a busy place responsible for storing and maintaining train cars. It originally included a total of six bays, and continued to expand throughout the late 1800s to eventually include a total of nineteen bays in addition to a machine shop that was capable of building an entire steam engine. As the mining industry declined in the early 1900s, so did the railroad traffic through Como. Fewer of the bays were being used leading to twelve being demolished around 1920. In 1935, a fire destroyed much of the remaining structure.
Community member Ed Sanborn grew up near Jefferson and provides insight about the Como Roundhouse in his 2002 interview.[2] Sanborn describes how the roundhouse was the place trains were able to turn around, but also as the only place in Park County with a hot shower in the 1920s, reaffirming its place as central to the lives of Como residents.