Available Turntables (to be Dismantled)

ebtrr · **Posted:** Mon Mar 19, 2018 11:26 am

These are noted in the turntables turned into bridges thread:

http://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=41651

Both are planned for demolition and replacement. Most likely you would only get two turntable beams and would have to reassemble an actual turntable and acquire ancillary parts, but if one were to contact the appropriate government agency, a nonprofit might be able to get them for free or low cost. Just wanted to put this out there in case anyone was looking.

If anyone else knows of turntables that are available (bridge use or not) feel tree to post replies.

In PA just northwest of Hollidaysburg. Slated for demolition:
http://bridgehunter.com/pa/blair/white-bridge-road/

In Silver Springs, MD. Closed for safety issues and possible demolition.
http://bridgehunter.com/md/montgomery/bh71996/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talbot_Avenue_bridge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/a-bridge-that-linked-black-and-white-neighborhoods-during-segregation-soon-will-be-lost-to-history/2016/09/24/59df40dc-7ab0-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html?utm_term=.c20e49473866

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Mon Mar 19, 2018 11:45 am

ebtrr wrote:

In Silver Springs, MD. Closed for safety issues and possible demolition.
http://bridgehunter.com/md/montgomery/bh71996/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talbot_Avenue_bridge
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/a-bridge-that-linked-black-and-white-neighborhoods-during-segregation-soon-will-be-lost-to-history/2016/09/24/59df40dc-7ab0-11e6-bd86-b7bbd53d2b5d_story.html?utm_term=.c20e49473866

First, it's "Silver Spring", not "Springs."

Second, the Talbot Avenue Bridge is the target of a local preservation effort that is fraught with racial implications (see linked article below), and I am of the opinion that any offer to purchase the bridge girders for use elsewhere will be greeted about as well as the proposition to repatriate L&A 4-6-0 503 has been so far.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tr ... story.html

Third, I have carefully inspected the Talbot Avenue Bridge while it was still open, and although I am not arguing that the bridge was not a turntable because I cannot prove a negative, I will note that any evidence of it having once been a railroad turntable aside from its shape has been removed in subsequent rehabilitations. In theory, however, those rehabilitations make the girders MORE suitable for contemporary reuse now than girders that have been neglected for decades.

Bridgehunter.com lists six other bridges nationwide reputed to have once been used as railroad turntables; I'm inclined to believe there may be/have been others that simply haven't been identified accordingly: http://bridgehunter.com/category/tag/re ... turntable/

This list does not include one of the Arizona Central/Verde Canyon RR trestles, which incorporates a main span that is confirmed through several accounts to have been the original turntable bridge used at the Santa Fe, Prescott & Pacific enginhouse in nearby Prescott and reinstalled with the upgrade of the line around 1926.

aswright · **Posted:** Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:25 pm

Perhaps the Everett Railroad might be interested so they don't have to back up 50% of the time? Especially in the one near them.

ColebrookdaleRailfan · **Joined:** Wed Jan 11, 2017 5:54 pm **Posts:** 84

I can't think that the Everett Railroad would have any use for a turntable. For one thing, they scarcely have space for it anywhere that it would be needed. There is almost no space to expand near Roaring Spring; Martinsburg, a location they run to only three times in a year already has a wye; Hollidaysburg could maybe be arranged, but not in a place that would make sense for logical operations; and Brooks Mill has a run around with no place to expand to either. I just don't see the merit for it, and I doubt the railroad's management can either.

Alexander D. Mitchell IV · **Posted:** Wed Mar 21, 2018 10:05 am

The one on Maryland will be saved--but not as a turntable.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/tr ... story.html

Quote:

The Maryland Transit Administration has agreed to save the steel girders from the Talbot Avenue bridge, a 100-year-old span in the Lyttonsville area of Silver Spring, when it’s torn down to make way for the light-rail line, the county said.

Longtime residents of Lyttonsville, which was founded in 1853 by a free black laborer, have been fighting for several years to preserve the bridge’s history. For years, they say, it provided a critical link to surrounding areas, including white neighborhoods where black residents were allowed to work but not live. It carried them over freight railroad tracks to reach buses that took them to restaurants and stores in the District, when they weren’t allowed to eat out or shop in Silver Spring. They also met taxis at the bridge when cabdrivers refused to use Lyttonsville’s muddy, pothole-filled roads left unpaved long after those in white neighborhoods.

The girders will be installed on a vacant state-owned parcel about two blocks from the bridge, near Talbot and Michigan avenues. They will form short walls on both sides of the Capital Crescent Trail to give runners and cyclists the feel of crossing a bridge.