From the Railroad Station Planbook

This is a scan of pages 12 & 13 of the Railroad Station Planbook. The credit given in the book was to :Drawing: Harold W Russell Jr. and Photo: Howard WAmeling, and were from a collection from:Julian Carver.

I bought this planbook a short time ago when I saw it mentioned on Scot Lawrence's web sight. I have read a number of articles on the web relating to the construction of these " pagoda" style railroad stations. I have always wondered about the origin of the design. The stations all share elements that are repeated in each station along the DL&W line. Over the years I have grown to believe that the stations were mass produced for this rail line, they were built much like a Barden home with panelized construction, the panels were sorted out depending on what each station may require, then the parts were loaded on a rail car and delivered along the line to each hamlet or village. Most began the same size, however, ones like my station in Atlanta N.Y. had some transformations; and it is my opinion, the Atlanta station had the freighthouse made larger after the main station and a small freight house were already built.

I base this belief of the pre-packaged train station on a number of things: first and most obvious, there were well over 31 of these depots built along the DL&W line, most if not all were all the exact same width. Most if not all had the exact same brackets, windows and doors.

One of the people who live in one of the DL&W depots which had been relocated told me the lumber in their depot was redwood.(it would interesting to learn if others were made of redwood)

My depot was researched for a graduate thesis and the student found written reference to the structures having been delivered to its location in a prepackaged form in 1882.

While studying the construction of my Atlanta Depot, I have determined the saw patterns on the oldest section differ from the center (baggage) section and differ again from the second freight house section.