Sorry for the repetition, I know that this subject has appeared before on RYPN.

I am looking for turntables in the 80' to 95' range that are looking for a new home. I know there are alot of 100 footers out there, but that would probably be overkill for what I am going to be swinging. Power source is not an issue. What is out there and how much do the owners need out of them?

Also, does anybody have any figures on recent turntable installations? Feel free to back channel me.

Thank you for your help!

Ryan Scott

rscott@gsmr.com

> I am looking for turntables in the 80' to
> 95' range that are looking for a new home.

Is 78' close enough?

Click here to see a turntable for sale.

A few years ago we were offered the GTW table at Port Huron, Michigan. If I recall correctly, it is 90 feet, having been shortened at some time in its past. It is a through-girder bridge for a shallow pit. It is probably still available from CN's Canac surplus-materials office at a low price.

Aarne H. Frobom
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Boc 665
Owosso, MI 48867-0665

> A few years ago we were offered the GTW
> table at Port Huron, Michigan. If I recall
> correctly, it is 90 feet, having been
> shortened at some time in its past. It is a
> through-girder bridge for a shallow pit. It
> is probably still available from CN's Canac
> surplus-materials office at a low price.

> Aarne H. Frobom
> The Steam Railroading Institute
> P. O. Boc 665
> Owosso, MI 48867-0665

The other possibility would be the former Pere Marquette turntable from Port Huron, now located in Mayville, Michigan. It sat in Port Huron from 1926-1999, when it was trucked to Mayville. I don't know the new owner, but you can see the turntable bridge on M-24.

TJG


Port Huron Museum
tjgaffney@phmuseum.org

On a somewhat related issue, about ten years ago Amtrak had a new turntable constructed; I believe it was somewhere in the Northeast. Does anyone have any details as to size, cost, etc., or the name of the company that did the work? Thanks!

kevinmccabe@avenew.com

You probably just missed out getting the 100 foot table from Houston's Southern Pacific Hrady Street Yard. It was free (just had to pay to get it out and shipped). It is probably cut up by now. You might try calling the scrapper there if you are interested. Bob Delany - 713-817-9635. I know several groups were trying to save it, but I don't know if they have.

Greg

> On a somewhat related issue, about ten years
> ago Amtrak had a new turntable constructed;
> I believe it was somewhere in the Northeast.
> Does anyone have any details as to size,
> cost, etc., or the name of the company that
> did the work? Thanks!


http://rypn.org/TRPA
Greg.Radler@parsons.com

Kevin,

Two years ago we got an estimate from Whiting for constructing a new 100-foot turntable bridge. The estimate was $800,000 installed in our hole. That was when the purchase of the New Buffalo turntable bridge began to look attractive. At a historic bridge conference we sat next to a salesman from a bridge company specializing in movable structures that built what sounds like the Amtrak bridge referred to above, but I can't recall their names. But they bought wine for the table just like Honest Nick.

No doubt out of our league, too, so just like Nick would advise, we're "doing it on the cheap." A bridge contractor has finished lengthening the New Buffalo bridge to 100 feet, and fixing the damage the PM probably did to it when they turned 1200's on it in the 1940's, and a lot of corrosion. The full-penetration welds on the upper and lower flanges and Huckbolting on the web reinforcements are very sexy. Two additional cells (or whatever you call them in bridge talk) were added to each end, outboard of the rollers. Coming soon: pile driving and concrete.

In other turntable news, at Hagerstown a few weeks ago I spotted the (Challenger-sized?) bridge sitting on timbers in the vacant field that used to be the engine terminal. Didn't ask the museum folks whose it was, though.

Aarne Frobom
The Steam Railroading Institute
P. O. Box 665
Owosso, MI 48867-0665

As posted a few months back, the city of Montpelier, VT has plans to turn the old Montpelier & Barre table into an amphitheater, or park. The plans suggest partially filling in the pit, and importing a "train car" of some sort.

If funding for this project dries up, perhaps it will become available. It looks to be 70-80' in length, is cut off from the main, and sits directly adjacent to an access road.

Montpelier Turntable Park plan

SJHussar@aol.com

Gee, from the plans on the Montpelier website, it looks like they may as well just get rid of the turntable in Turntable Park. Really poor design!

pvanmeter@msn.com

CSX built a new one or relocated one at Clifton Forge, Va., after they started running these wide-nosed GEs solo--pretty hard to see down the long hood of those rigs on the twists and turns of the James River line. jim

Wrinnbo@aol.com

I am taking this opportunity to perch upon my soapbox and preach to all ye that will hear me about turntables.

Turntable bridges are one of those items that to most people (even many of us) put firmly in the category of "you've seen one, you've seen them all." I am sure that is part of the reason that they tend to be moved around a lot... taken from their homes for use, storage or display elsewhere. A turntable bridge on timbers is a bridge awaiting a pit. An empty pit is a hole awaiting a bridge. And so it goes.

Yet, many turntables (pit and bridge combined) tell very specific stories. Like any machine, their wear, modifications and mechanisms speak volumes of their service lives.

Hang on, I need a taller box...
I guess what saddens me is that each time one of these bridges is stripped from its pit, another chance of greater infrastructure preservation is gone.

In the northeast and New England, there are very few turntable/pit/roundhouse or even just turntable/pit combo's left.

May favorite is the LNE shop at Pen Argyl, PA who's fate is TBD (thought the site is a tremendously complete steam era facilitiy with a huge 1911 shop building, there have been no museum proposals that I know of).

There aren't any complete sets in New Jersey (though there is at least one bridge in storage). Vermont boasts the CPR facility at Newport, CV at Saint Albans and the CV at White River Junction. The M&B table mentioned doesn't have a roundhouse, but at least it is in it's rightful place!

New Hampshire has a couple. Maine? At least two.

You get the picture... of the ones I am mentioning, only North Conway, NH's B&M facility is preserved in private hands. Several of the others are still in RR use.

I guess this is a long (looooooooooong) winded plea to consider the turntable bridge as more than an interchangeable hunk of metal. They deserve preservation in their pit when at all possible. If there is a bridge/pit combo (even without a roudhouse) near you, realize how rare that once integral piece of infrastructure has become.

A bridge faced with scrapping deserves rescue. For sure, without a doubt.

But a bridge and pit still together deserve a preservation effort in place.

I'll climb down now to face the flames...


Rob

trains@robertjohndavis.com

Having read the comments here and on other boards and publications about the master planning for Montpelier, I have to say they might as well just scrap the table and backfill the pit. At least then we wouldn't have the nightmare of preervation via adaptive reuse.

NOT!!!!!

It is easy for the purists (like me) to kick a project like this, but I have learned over time that railroad preservation and interpretation has value whether or not is done to the purists spec.

In the case of Montpelier, they have a very small plot of land with what lesser cities might see as rusty railroad scrap on it.

Instead of filling it in, or just letting it sit, they are considering some reuse of the artifact, and if the project goes through, that turntable will be sitting in its pit for decades to come.

How many others will be scrapped in filled while this one goes on to serve the community in a new way and to remind people there was a deep railroad history to the area?

If you want a campaign in Vermont, the time is now to get the City of Burling to save the lakeside Rutoland roundhouse and turntable. If the city gets its way (and it is looking more likely) the Vermont Rail System will move its yard to a new site south of town adn give up the Rutland yard site to the city of for waterfront park acerage. Track will remain through the park.

That means that the currently active Rutland turntable and roundhouse will need to be adpated in some form, or demolished to clear the view to the lake.

Anyone have an insider's look at this one?

Rob

> Gee, from the plans on the Montpelier
> website, it looks like they may as well just
> get rid of the turntable in Turntable Park.
> Really poor design!


trains@robertjohndavis.com

www.montpelier-vt.org/img/turntable/Tur ... 11-Blg.jpg

This isn't preservation. Disneyfication? Rehabilitation? what is it?
just poor design as I see it. Put it someplace for proper (re)use.

pvanmeter@msn.com

> CSX built a new one or relocated one at
> Clifton Forge, Va., after they started
> running these wide-nosed GEs solo--pretty
> hard to see down the long hood of those rigs
> on the twists and turns of the James River
> line. jim
Are you referring to the turntable at the roundhouse site, located toward the west end of the yard? The roundhouse table was big enough to turn a C&O 2-8-8-2 or 2-6-6-6, and it turned the Virginia Central's ex-CP G5 4-6-2's in October, 1993.

bruceman@stargate.net

> Are you referring to the turntable at the
> roundhouse site, located toward the west end
> of the yard? The roundhouse table was big
> enough to turn a C&O 2-8-8-2 or 2-6-6-6,
> and it turned the Virginia Central's ex-CP
> G5 4-6-2's in October, 1993.

Nope, over where the Depot is. They used to have an air operated on there for the track crew. Typical railroad though they scraped that one when the put in the new desiel fueling rack. (moved over closer to high way and supposedly so they didn't have to cross the mainline to service engines) any way with in ten years of tearing the old one out they put a new one back in!! sad thing was they had promised the old one to Jack Showalter. It was air operated and he wanted to put it at Staunton where the possiblity of flooding was greater. beats haveing to keep drying out electric motors every time the pump quits.

Ben

http://www.cassrailroad.com/
btrue@vt.edu