Pere Marquette Means Much To Grand Rapids (1907)

Reprinted from the Detroit Free Press, December 30, 1907.

Pere Marquette Shops Employ Hundreds and Pay Out Over $1 Million A Year.

Heavier Repairs Are Made There, and Workmen Can Even Build Engines

Grand Rapids, MI, December 29. - There were a good many people over this way who thought Grand Rapids had been dealt a bad blow by the removal of the Pere Marquette general offices to Detroit two or three years ago, but since that time the system has built up here the great Wyoming yards and shops, the biggest on its system and worth far more to the city in dollars and cents than the general offices ever were.

Almost 500 men are employed in the shops, and probably it reaches fully that figure when the yardmen, switchmen and others who clean out the ten miles of track in the yards are daily figured in.

With the shops this city is really the central point of the system, in spite of the fact that the general offices are located in Detroit. With five divisions centering here, with the shops here, with the head of one of the road's three districts here, it is little wonder that Grand Rapids is an important point on the Pere Marquette.

Just how important it is and just how much that importance means in dollars and cents to the city is indicted in the following table which shows that the Pere Marquette spends $100,000 every month in wages in this city:

Pere Marquette Monthly Grand Rapids Payroll:

• Wyoming shops - 484 men - $30,000
• Engineers and firemen - 250 men - $25,000
• Conductors and brakemen - 350 men - $24,000
• Switchmen, flagmen and other yardmen - 80 men - $7,000
• Engineering department, bridge and section men - 75 men - $6,000
• Executive offices freight and other clerks - 90 men - $8,000
• Totals - 1329 men - $100,000 per month payroll

$1,200,000 is a record the like of which is held by no Grand Rapids industry except the making of furniture for which the city is famous. With its forty [furniture] factories and its army of 7,000 workmen the furniture business pays in wages every year $2,000,000 in this city.

The big Wyoming shops do the heavier repair work for the entire line. There are smaller shops at Ionia, Traverse City and Chicago and they do considerable work for their divisions, but all of the heavier work comes to this city, where the road is equipped with the best of machinery to do anything that needs to be done on a railroad system having 2,400 miles of track, as has the Pere Marquette. Locomotives could be and have been built here, but the road does not go largely into that, leaving building of locomotives to concerns that make a specialty of it.

The shops are in charge of Samuel A. Chamberlain, who has been with the road for several years and is known as an expert master mechanic.

One of the features at the the shops is a roundhouse that is not a round house. It is a long, rectangular building looking like a small factory. In it are stalls and tracks for 24 engines. At the end of its run the engine comes in on a track that would just about pierce the center of the long building. Here it runs onto what is called a transfer table which runs on a track upon and down in front of the stalls. The transfer table is operated by electric power from a trolley and once on it, the locomotive is taken to the stall waiting for it and runs off into the "roundhouse that is not a roundhouse".

Few Like This Roundhouse

There are but four or five of this type in the country, and Mr. Chamberlain has had many letters from railroad men in regard to it. Some of the points in its favor are convenience in getting the engines in, saving of time in allowing the workmen to get at them, and a saving of space.

Some facts about the shops and yard that show what a big institution the road maintains here are given below:

Facts About The Big Wyoming Shops

• Men Employed - 484
• Water used every 24 hours, in gallons - 500,000
• Has big crane that will lift 100 tons
• Has its own fire department and plant for fire protection.
• Uses new system of stalls for engines side by side instead of old-fashioned roundhouse, engines being carried on transfer table.
• The biggest shop the Pere Marquette owns.
• Has storehouse and stock room for entire system.

Facts About Wyoming Yards

• Cars handled daily - Over 1,000
• Monthly car average - 35,000
• Miles of switch tracks - 11
• Switch engines employed to do Grand Rapids work - 24
• Merchandise freight trains made up nightly - 5
• Car loads of freight originating in Grand Rapids daily - about 150

The road maintains a Y.M.C.A. building at the sops where many of the men live. The shop is just at the edge of the city, and an ambitious person who say an opportunity to make money tried to start a saloon there, but the road found ways and means to freeze him out.

[DFP-1907-1230]