On our way home from the 2016 Center for Railroad Photography & Art conference, my friend George Hiotis and I visited the Age of Steam Roundhouse in Sugarcreek, Ohio.  At the time, the vast and almost brand-new facility did not offer regular tours; we got in on a day on which members of the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society could buy tickets -- and we had joined the Society specifically so we could check out the newest roundhouse in the world, the first full-size and fully-equipped one built in America since the early 1950s.  It had appeared at the edge of a small Ohio town, like something out of "Field of Dreams", after a locomotive collector named Jerry Jacobson sold the system of railroads he had built up over the course of two decades; he kept his locomotives and some other rolling stock and put an undisclosed amount of the $230 million from the sale into making his vision of a 20th-century steam-servicing facility a reality.  Even after walking through the place and touching it, I still do not quite believe it really exists.

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Please visit the Age of Steam Web site for more information, including about public tours now available.