Spencer Shops: The South's Greatest Locomotive Hospital

Southern Railway chose this spot in eighteen ninety-six because it sat almost exactly halfway between Washington and Atlanta. They built a vast repair complex named Spencer Shops after the railroad's first president, Samuel Spencer, and the town of Spencer grew up around it.

At its peak the facility employed twenty-five hundred workers and turned out a fully rebuilt steam locomotive every single day. Light repairs ran around the clock on seventy-five engines at a time. Then diesel arrived. By nineteen sixty fewer than one hundred workers remained, and the shops closed for good in nineteen seventy nine. Southern Railway donated the first four acres to North Carolina in nineteen seventy-seven, and today the site is a state historic site and the North Carolina Transportation Museum, preserving the roundhouse, the transfer table, and the story of the men who kept the South's railways running.