Steamtown's turntable was made new for the park service.

Remember...there are other tables out there too.

TVRM has a 3rd turntable....not installed but sitting beside their belt line at Holtzclaw and Wilcox...extremely easy to see.

Great Smoky Mountain Railroad has a turntable stored in Bryson City, NC beside their mainline...also not installed. You can go online and find articles concerning when/where/if the GSMR will ever install a table, or for that matter run steam in the near future.

Here are some more details on the turntable at the Kentucky RR Museum: About 1980 - An 85' turntable from the New York Central/Big Four roundhouse in Preston St yard, Louisville, KY, built by the Pennsylvania Steel Company, Steelton, PA, in 1911, was moved to the Kentucky Railway Museum, at Ormsby Station, east of Louisville. 1990 - The 85' New York Central/Big Four turntable at the Kentucky Railway Museum made a second move when the museum was relocated to New Haven, KY, about 50 miles away. It is now sitting on three flatcars.

And the newly acquired one at the Tennesee Valley Railroad: 2010 – The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga, TN, obtained a 100’ turntable from the ex-Southern Railway’s Peagram Shop in Atlanta, built in the 1920s, which had been moved to the Chattanooga Diesel Shop by NS for possible use there. Its use was eventually decided against and it was donated to the museum and moved to a location along their track.

Any info on just when the last one was built and by which firm would be welcome.

The Steamtown turntable was built new to fit the old DL&W pit. It was built about 1994 by Macton Corp of Oxford, CT, an industrial builder of such things as turntables and transfer tables and material handling equipment. They occasionally have ads in the railroad trade publications.

Howard P.

IRM has had a turntable on site for many years, perhaps many decades. It is about 75 feet long (plus or minus) and of the bridge design where the lower cord of the beams becomes very deep at the center. That could be a problem with a seasonally high water table at the proposed site for installation. Then, our collection has grown with many engines larger than the length of this unit. So a longer bridge would be of interest, and if and when that is accomplished this current one could become surplus.

Or in "DREAM MODE", install the smaller one at the east end of the line, and have TWO operating turntables!

This one came from the C&NW in nearby Harvard, IL. That town was the terminus for several commuter runs, and in steam days, warranted some way to turn the engines. Harvard probably had a small engine house, but not a large roundhouse, shops, support facilities. Diesels and the early adoption of push-pull service by the C&NW pretty much sealed the fate of this unit. The commuter runs survive, operated by METRA on the same route, now under the UP banner of ownership.

I am sure someone will chime in, correcting my recollections, or adding more detail. The bridge and ring rails, other parts sit on our campus in Union.


Bob Kutella

Maybe consider trading with the States of Colorado and New Mexico.
They have a C&S 100' turntable from Rice Yard in storage at the
Cumbres and Toltec Scenic. New operator Al Harper from the Durango and Silverton
has made indications he wants to collaborate with the FCTS to rebuilt a 9 or 10 stall
roundhouse on the site, which would ultimately facilitate more locomotive work, plus
provide public display areas for some equipment.

Here is a similar version of the one they have, this one was at Cheyenne.

Source:
http://ptatransitauthority.blogspot.com/2010/01/cheyenne-trains.html

The Illinois Ry Museum turntable is 80 feet long and was obtained in 1981.

I apologize in advance for dredging up this old thread. While checking Facebook and being otherwise unproductive, I happened upon The Kentucky Railway Museum's turntable project. This project (in my opinion) has been flying very much "under the radar" and hasn't received much media coverage. Furthermore, I haven't seen any mentions of it in the online Rail Preservation circles.

From what I can tell, the project was formally kicked off in September of last year. Steady progress has been made and in the past week, the Kentucky Railway Museum's 85' Turntable was set into the newly cast concrete turntable pit. Interestingly, the museum was able to use their ex-U.S. Army crane to lift the turntable bridge into place, which is similar to how the Illinois Railway Museum offloaded their 130' DRG&W turntable in 2016. Its great to see the KRM making serious progress on a large-scale project of this nature. It is even better seeing a museum utilize their own equipment in the process.

I do not work for/volunteer with/represent the KRM in any capacity. All photos are courtesy of the KRM official Facebook page.

Best,
-Andrew

Great Shots of the museums American crane at works.

American C/N J3155 40 ton Diesel Electric 10-53
US Army Transportation Corps. #C-1705 Ft. Knox, KY
(Built with foreign couplers and 6-wheel trucks.)
Kentucky Ry Museum 1994 (now has automatic couplers)

Thanks for this update and great news. There was coverage of this project in the Fall 2015 issue of Classic Trains projecting completion in late 2016. But it was great to see the photos of the lift.

Hard to beat the handiness of a locomotive crane , and what a neat crane she is.

Can anyone updste us on the turntable project at the Kentucky Railway Museum. Nothing new on their web or Facebook sites since it was lifted into its new pit months ago.

The Peninsular Railway & Lumberman's Museum of Shelton, WA has been given Simpson Tbr. Co's 60 foot turntable if they can move it.

Folks,
Nobody has mentioned the replica roundhouse and turntable project at Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum. Their newsletter said they got the table from the old Edaville railroad site. I do not know where it was before that.

Another new turntable project is the Como Roundhouse and turntable restoration at Como, Colorado.

i may have misunderstood the story, but it may be that the same turntable bridge that left Como in the 1940s for a scrap yard in Denver is the same one that has just been placed in their pit.

And staying with the narrow gauge; the WW&F Railway Museum has built a replica table using Portland Company plans for the WW&F wooden table they have in operation. For more see the WW&F Ry Museum facebook.com pages for video of it in operation.

Closer to me, the turntable pit at the Southern Pacific Shops in Sacramento still exists. the California State Railroad Museum is going to restore it as part of the museum development. They already have restored the transfer table on the same site.

And up further in this thread, the turntable article in the Fall RMQ on tables and their past lives is the best thing I have ever seen on the subject of turntable preservation.

Ted Miles, WW&F Member