The Beech Grove Shops is a railway maintenance facility in Beech Grove, Indiana, outside Indianapolis. Beech Grove is Amtrak's primary maintenance facility. It also contains a very large freight yard.HistoryThe shops were originally constructed in 1904-1908 by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway (the "Big Four"), servicing a network stretching across the Midwest into Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. The facility was used as the company’s repair shop for steam locomotives, passenger, and freight cars. The facility passed to the New York Central Railroad in 1922, on its formal acquisition of the Big Four, and then on to Penn Central Transportation in 1968 when the Central merged with the Pennsylvania Railroad. Penn Central declared bankruptcy in 1970. Amtrak purchased the facility from the bankrupt Penn Central in 1975. On September 20th, 2002, an F2 tornado hit the shops damaging Coach Shop 3, which was going to be torn down after the tornado, it used to overhaul Superliner passenger cars until 2000.AboutAlthough the shops were acquired by the New York Central Railway in 1906, the Big Four worked as an independent business until it was formally merged with its owner in 1922.
