In 1885 the City of Washington, Indiana, donated sixty(60) acres of land and $75,000 to the Ohio & Mississippi Railroad. In return for this the railroad built their railroad shops to serve the repair and construction needs of the railroad. The shops were completed in 1889. The shops eventually hired over 600 men and constructed a roundhouse which contaned 34 stalls, a machine shop, erecting shop, tin, copper, and pipe shop, boiler shop, planning mill, passenger car shop, paint shop, steel car shop and freight car shops. The shops built locomotives, passenger cars, freight cars, dining cars and or any repair to plants.
At this date a few of the older brick shops are still standing unused along with some visible signs of the concrete that was once the stalls of the roundhouse.
