Steam & Excursion > Siamese turntables-- how common?

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/41727573_f2288fc6ed_b.jpg

Where is this, anyway? What's the advantage of that turntable arrangement?

Those look to be bomb craters, if I'm not mistaken. To much civilazation to be the Middle East, no jungle, maybe Europe. Doesn't help much, I know.......

Ed

Hmmm...judging from engineer's cap (upper right), I'd say Germany. ;)

Don't know if there is an advantage other than there are two roundhouses each and so there would be two turntables each for each roundhouse, or are there four roundhouses attached by a building (straight section). Perhaps shorter engines in on one side where the smaller table is and longer engines where the other larger table is. Or something longer turned on the larger table. Interesting isn't it.

One thing though is that they could transfer something from round house to roundhouse via the double turntable.

Looks like the roofs on each round house are damaged...might this be WWII images?

I think it's WWII Germany as I've seen shots like this before somewhere. I vaguely remember seeing a shot of a German Federal RR roundhouse at Cologne with twin tts.

This is conjecture, but one advantage of two turntables would be to get more locomotives in and out of the house in a shorter amount of time. In the photo, the left house has about 31 stalls by my count. If it were a one table house you would get roughly 27 stalls with about the same 200 degrees of house around the table. Having one table serve 27 stalls vs. two tables serve 31 stalls means you could move almost twice as many locomotives in and out in the same amount of time. This could have consequences in a densely trafficked area. There is also the safety factor where if a turntable is disabled, only half as many locomotives in the stalls around it are not able to get out. In the steam days, when a locomotive went into the pit, all the locomotives in that house were "locked in" till the turntable use was restored.

That seems to make the most sense (different sized equipment), in addition to the fact that with this arrangement you can better utilize the space. It looks like both roundhouses were confined to the space between two sets of tracks, so to fill the space without wasting any of it, they made the roundhouses "longer" without making them "wider".

Also, it seems that from this setup you could theoretically have 4 locomotives being turned and sent out to the ready track at the same time, reducing bottleneck traffic with locos waiting their "turn". (No pun intended.) Don't think of each one as one huge roundhouse, but as two smaller ones put really close together.

That's what I think, anyway.

- Mike

Mike Lewis
Cheyenne, WY
Wasatch Railroad Contractors

I agree with the other voters for Germany in WWII. Those are definitely bomb craters, and when and where else would there be this much support equipment for steam? Since the USA didn't get bombed during WWII, it has to be Europe.

I would guess that the shorter turntables were built first. Later, longer locomotives were built which required longer turntables and roundhouse stalls. There was no reason to tear down good roundhouses which could still service the smaller locomotives. The yard tracks were pretty much already established so the best option was to squeeze in the new, larger facilities as close as possible to the old ones. That's my quess. Those do appear to be gifts from the US Army Air Corps. Nomenclature: Crater, Bomb, 500lb.

AdamPhillips Wrote:
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> I would guess that the shorter turntables were
> built first. Later, longer locomotives were built
> which required longer turntables and roundhouse
> stalls. There was no reason to tear down good
> roundhouses which could still service the smaller
> locomotives. The yard tracks were pretty much
> already established so the best option was to
> squeeze in the new, larger facilities as close as
> possible to the old ones. That's my quess. Those
> do appear to be gifts from the US Army Air Corps.
> Nomenclature: Crater, Bomb, 500lb.

I concur.

Looking again at the pic-- could the small turntables be narrow-gauge? If so, we oughta be able to figure out where it is. Doesn't have to be Germany-- could be France, or maybe Italy?

I agree about being able to move more locomotives quickly, also a roundhouse (or in this case 4, 1/4 roundhouses) would be limited in the number of stalls based on the diameter of the table. With this arrangement in theory you could align the two tables to move a locomotive to any stall you desired. In effect you've doubled the size of your roundhouse while not consuming a lot more space. They've almost created a rectangular roundhouse.