Adjoining turntables

bobyar2001 · **Posted:** Sat Jan 27, 2007 3:38 pm

Aerial photo, apparently in Germany WWII era. I don't think this is Koln, where they had the overlapping turntables that I previously inquired about. Still wondering if those Koln turntables are there..

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/22/41727 ... c6ed_b.jpg

museumops · **Posted:** Sat Jan 27, 2007 5:04 pm

After seeing the photo could this have been a railroads adaptive reuse of a bomb crater?

scottychaos · **Posted:** Sat Jan 27, 2007 10:50 pm

two turntables serving one roundhouse..
why couldnt one turntable be used to serve the whole roundhouse?
why the added complexity of two turntables?

unless..the only reason I can think of..perhaps the facility was SO busy, so many locomotives being serviced, that two turntables were needed to handle the workload??

anyone know for sure?

thanks,
Scot

k5ahudson · **Joined:** Tue Aug 24, 2004 6:30 am **Posts:** 773

bobyar2001 wrote:

Still wondering if those Koln turntables are there..

It looks like at least one of them is. Both pits are obviously still there....

ray dewley · **Joined:** Sat Nov 20, 2004 3:18 pm **Posts:** 150

A friend of mine who never saw them wondered if one roundhouse was a car repair facility.

Jack A. Siffert · **Joined:** Mon Aug 23, 2004 5:11 pm **Posts:** 373

The radial pattern of the tracks does not look very round more like an oval.Maybe that's why there are 2. just a thought

Les Beckman · **Joined:** Tue Aug 02, 2005 1:25 pm **Posts:** 6482

Jack A. Siffert wrote:

The radial pattern of the tracks does not look very round more like an oval.Maybe that's why there are 2. just a thought

Jack -

The New York Central (Michigan Central) had two turntables in Jackson, Michigan. One of them is now at our museum and, hopefully, will one day be installed in the ground.

Another place that I know had two turntables was the old Chicago & Western Indiana facility at 47th Street in Chicago. One of the turntables was shorter and was used for cars (such as observation cars) that needed to be turned between runs. The C&WI of course, operated Dearborn Station for the railroads that owned it.

I am sure there were other places in the country that had two turntables.

Les Beckman (Hoosier Valley Railroad Museum/North Judson, Indiana)
My guess is that other facilities

CVRA 7 · **Posted:** Thu Feb 01, 2007 3:46 pm

Just a guess-
Each roundhouse area has two different sized turntables, so my guess is there might have been a phased-in modernization program underway - maybe the newer locomotives (Kriegsloks?) didn't fit the old tables, and eventually the smaller tables were scheduled for removal - that is if the RAF and USAAF didn't remove them first!

softwerkslex · **Posted:** Thu Feb 01, 2007 4:56 pm

Actually, there are 4 turntables in the cited picture! Bomb craters are visible in the upper photo.

Two turntables make a lot of sense for a busy terminal, if you need to get a lot of engines out fast at a peak period.

bobyar2001 · **Posted:** Mon Feb 05, 2007 9:51 pm

Englishman Bryan Benn, who maintains an excellent website dealing with German steam and the Plandampf program, has answered my longstanding query about the two overlapping turntables. The Cologne tables were side-by-side, but did not overlap. The overlapping tables were farther north at the Altona locomotive depot at Hamburg. They are pictured on these pages of his site (see the 1969 and 1971 parts), which deal with the operation, retirement, near scrapping, rebuilding, operation again, and rebuilding again of one DB Pacific:

http://www.germansteam.co.uk/Archive/Archive.html