Steam & Excursion > Double Turntable

4th District posted these on the Model Railroad Board taken near Hamburg, Germany. There were other examples and at least one in France. Did we have anything like this in North America?

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/14 09:04 by wabash2800.

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Gotta love them Europeans and their love for all things complicated.

Yes, especially the Germans, great engineers. As long as they had enough arrival and departure tracks, it appears they could move more steam locos in and out.

I would love to see some overhead video of both turntables turning at the same time!

What's the building attached inside the roundhouse area?

MarkMeoff Wrote:
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> Gotta love them Europeans and their love for all
> things complicated.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/14 09:23 by wabash2800.

Doesn't seem like they gained many more stalls by doing that. THey could have just increase the length of the bays and had two locomotives per stall.

Plus the mechanism to make the turntable structure itself continuous across the common area of the pits must have been a nightmare.

CV the civil e in NJ

I think the idea is to get locos in and out faster without waiting for one loco at a time. With only one turntable, adding more stalls doesn't do that. I think its genius. Perhaps we didn't have the demands they did. (More passenger trains?) I think we often solved the problem by having a separate roundhouse and turntable for passenger locos.

But now that I look at it closer, the two turntables can not make a continuous turn at the same time... Partly yes, (not bad), but not continuous, but perhaps still faster than having locos wait to get on one turntable.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/14 13:20 by wabash2800.

What could possibly go wrong ?

wabash2800 Wrote:
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> 4th District posted these on the Model Railroad
> Board taken near Hamburg, Germany. There were
> other examples and at least one in France. Did we
> have anything like this in North America?

This is Altona, and as built the two turntables did not overlap. It was only when longer tables were installed that this overlap was created.

If I remember correctly one turntable and its associated bays served passenger power, and the other served freight power.

https://www.google.com/maps/@53.5614324,9.9344714,36m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/14 09:57 by johnacraft.

Thanks John. Interesting.

Maybe the building is a tower to control the crossing diamonds - in the turntable outer rails!

ddg Wrote:
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> What could possibly go wrong ?

My thoughts exactly. Although back then people payed more attention. That would be screwed up in .0005 of a second these days.

Posted from Android

That's fascinating. I appreciate the photo, never thought anything like that existed! === === = === JLH

There were several in Germany. Here is a link to a German site showing pictures from the Cologne (Köln)

http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?17,6699772,page=all

It definitely is superb German engineering, but then again it looks like 2 more places to have derailments---one when the turntables collide and another on the diamonds after exiting the turntable. I think it is pretty neat and am glad you showed this sort of thing exists.
Brian Stevens

UPRR3985 Wrote:
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> ddg Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > What could possibly go wrong ?
>
> My thoughts exactly. Although back then people
> payed more attention. That would be screwed up in
> .0005 of a second these days.

Lyrics to the "German Hostler's Oom Pah Pah March":
Double your pleasure,
Double your fun,
Dive into two pits,
Instead of one

-E.O.

Were they overlapping just to save some space? I don't quite understand the point of overlapping the circles, since that makes them interfere with each other. Why not have two full circles a little bit apart?

-K

ddg Wrote:
>>What could possibly go wrong ?>>

Suspenders and a Belt Theory.
DAF

As John, said, initially the turntables were smaller, so did not overlap. And then there was a need for larger turntables (longer locos). Perhaps, it was not possible to have two larger turntables that did not overlap either because of geometry or having to change all the angles on the roundhouse tracks?

Possible example of government ownership = overly complicated?

Westbound Wrote:
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> Possible example of government ownership = overly
> complicated?

No, just able to turn a large number of locomotives in a short period of time.

Interesting to see how the coal was transported on an aerial bucket. Curious complexity, but I guess it worked.

tskram Wrote:
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> There were several in Germany. Here is a link to a
> German site showing pictures from the Cologne
> (Köln)
>
> http://www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren/read.php?17
> ,6699772,page=all