The Turner shop, or engine house was one of the original structures in Turner yard.  Built in the summer of 1913, it remained a functional part of the yard until it was removed sometime in the late 1980s.  The shop was of wooden post and beam construction with a concrete foundation and concrete slab floor.  The outside of the structure was covered in clapboard, and unlike many

Dale Wilson (1971)
Here is the front of the Turner shop in 1971.  Note the Wheeled Loader parked in front of the building.  This loader was used to to move iron ore pellets around the Inco Pellet Loader.  Note also the very old Jordan Spreader parked on the old coach track to the north of the building.

other CPR owned structures never suffered the indignity of having insulbrick siding applied to it during the 1950s and sixties.  

The building was 96.5 feet deep by 112.5 feet wide and was built with four tracked service stalls each equipped with a concrete inspection pit.  On the 1929 plan for Turner they are labelled from south to north as tracks 8, 7, 9 and 10.   Track 7, the main shop track was 1593 feet long and branched directly off the yard lead via a #8 rigid frog switch guarded by an intermediate height switch stand.  This track also served as the locomotive service track with the coaling tower, sand house, cinder pit and water stand pipe facilities arrayed along its length.  Track 7 entered the shop via the second door from the south, that is the door just to the right of the loader in the first picture. Track 8, the south most shop track branched off the main shop track via a left hand #9 rigid frog switch operated by a high switch stand.  This 320 foot track was, like all the other shop tracks, laid with 80 pound rail.  Just after the switch to track 8 branched off the main

	Dale Wilson (1971)
	Another shot of the Turner shop. This view clearly shows the south side of the building.  The crazy mix of windows is the result of various renovations done over the years.

shop track, a right hand #8 rigid frog switch operated by an intermediate switch stand branched off the main shop track and lead to the 994 foot coach track.  This track ran along the northern side of the shop and was used to store passenger equipment during layovers at Little Current.  In later years this became the home of a very old model Jordan Spreader.  The northern two shop tracks, 9 and 10, branched off this coach track.  Both were accessed via left hand #8 rigid frog switches guarded by low switch stands.  They were 324 and 196.5 feet in length respectively.

The shop underwent various renovations over the years.  A close investigation of Dale Wilson's 1971 photograph of of the south side of the shop shown above reveals five distinctly different window styles which considering there are only seven windows in the side of the building must be some kind of record.  A comparison of that picture with the picture below also shows the building to have gained a door in its southwest corner.  A close inspection of the 1952 aerial view of turner yard, shown on the Turner, General Layout page, which I had blown up to a 2 foot by three foot enlargement for modelling purposes, shows yet another window arrangement.  

It appears also from that 1952 aerial view that the shop may have had a boiler in its northwest corner.  There is a stack coming out of the roof near the northwest corner that is both different and not in line with the other track vent stacks.  This stack had been removed by the mid seventies and any equipment remaining in the shop was powered by electricity.  

Although the size of the shop might indicate that a well equipped machine shop capable of fairly extensive maintenance to locomotives and rolling stock might exist here, this was apparently not so, at least as far as the locomotives were concerned.  All heavy repairs to the AER's locomotives were performed in the Sault Ste Marie shops of her sister company the Algoma Central Railway.

By the 1950s only the two centre stalls in the shop remained tracked.  The door to the track 10 stall was filled in and at least part of the area had been converted into an office

Courtesy Little Current-Howland Museum Sheguiandah, Ontario
This section of a steamship postcard picture taken in the early days of the railway is the only known view of the rear of the shop.  The object to the right is the steamship "Georgian" the subject of the photo.  The crayon mark on the left side is a photographer's crop mark.  I am unsure of what the tall pole to the left of the photo is.

area.  There is a regular entrance door filling part of the former stall door area with a window directly above it.  Mounted on the wall by this door and leading up beside the window is a wooden ladder.  The purpose of this arrangement remains unknown.

At some point, the south stall (track 8) had its entrance way lowered to about three quarters of the height of the other doors.  The exterior swinging doors were also replaced with a pair of interior mounted sliding doors.

By 1976, only one track remained in the shop.  This was track 9, the second track from the north which now branched off the stub of the main shop track.  The door to the second stall from the south (track 7) had undergone a modification which lowered the door height by approximately two feet.  Since this stall was used to do maintenance on the wheeled loaders, one may assume that the height reduction was tailored to the loader height.  At one point, probably during this modification a new set of doors were applied to this stall.  Thus of the original four track shop, only one stall remained tracked at the end.  One stall had its door filled in and the other three each had a different style of door with only the track 8 stall retaining the original doors.