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Missouri ~ Kansas ~ Texas Railroad 
The round house was a place where trains (or at least engines) drove onto a
turntable
which rotated, enabling the engine to head out in the direction from which it had come. The
M.K. & T. roundhouse was located in the area that would be under
the viaduct in the future. It was a huge locomotive garage in the
shape of a "U" with a turntable in the center of the "U". Tracks
led to the stalls, which all centered on the turntable. The
turntable would line the trains up with the stalls on the varaious
tracks. The trains were stored in the roundhouse for tunning
maintenance and repairs. The Southern Pacific Railway Company had
a separate roundhouse, located east of the Union Depot in Denison.
(Claude Easterly (1932 - 1973), editor of The Denion Herald)
Contractor Melville of the M.K. & T. commenced work for putting up new machine and blacksmith shops near the roundhouse; the old ones were sent to Muskogee. The machine shop was to be 40 feet wide by 60 feet deep; the blacksmith shop 30 feet by 50 feet. The possibiliyt of further enlargement would probably occur sometime during 1874. (The Denison Daily News, December 17, 1873) The machine shops were referred to as the "back shops." Men employed in the shops were mechanics known as "locomotive carpenters.: (Claude Easterly (1932 - 1973), editor of The Denison Herald) 
early MKT roundhouse ca1895 Denison, Texas Source: Art Work of Grayson County. Published in Twelve Parts. Chicago: W. H. Parish Publishing Co., 1895
Scene at the MKT Railroad Shops Denison "Round House, Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad Company." Robinson, Frank M., comp. Industrial Denison. [N.p.]: Means-Moore Co., [ca. 1901]. Page 64. "This was likely the first, which was board and batten wooden construction. It
likely started out with six stalls when first built after the Katy arrived in
Denison and added on to in six stall increments. The second roundhouse which was constructed of concrete and brick about 1900 - 1904."
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