? about turntable stalls

Sean, I think my layout would be considered medium size at 12 x18. I'm attempting to follow a prototype also. The roundhouse will have five stalls and the track distance from the TT to the round house doors is about the same as the diameter of the TT which is fairly typical of prototype arrangements. I have only small steam like 4-6-0's. Even so the area required is about 30 inches in length and about 21" in width at the back corners of the roundhouse. Do these things ever eat up space! Bruce

Yeah Bruce, I have had many self struggles about should I or should I not incorperate a TT into a layout. Nothing looks neater than a roundhouse full of locos with their noses poked out.............BUT they do consume alot of real estate. I favor a WYE sometimes for loco turn-arounds. The old atlas 9 inch TT is just big enough to turn a MK-11 2-8-2 or a C-9 class 2-8-0 (SP classes of locos), and those were really tight! Remember the Wilson 15 inch TT? I could get a Cab-Forward on one of those just barely.................... The TT at Portland Oregon's former SP Brooklan yards is 100 foot table. The SP 4449 and SP&S 700 fit on it............. Like I always say it's your RR do what pleases you!

John "Bruce Favinger" wrote in message news:VtbVd.20471$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...

CORRECTION: That's Brooklyn yard.

Years ago the Pennsy had a 360 degree roundhouse at Altoona. That's as big as you can make them. One the other end of the scale, at North Conway NH, the roundhouse had only three stalls. So just about anything is prototypical. To create the look of a major engine facility on a Class 1 road I'd try for a round house that covered about 90 degrees of the turntable's arc. To save space I'd pull the front of the round house as close to the turntable pit as would look proper. There was a round house at Bellows Falls so close to the pit that the open roundhouse doors over hung the pit. I don't know if I'd go that far, but the closer you come to the pit, the smaller the overall roundhouse works out. Once you have sized your round house, you figure the number of stalls on two things. Each roundhouse stall needs a door big enough to admit the locomotive. I'd make each door big to pass the NMRA gage.

David Starr

John, I grappled with having a roundhouse or not too. My original track plan had a turntable but no roundhouse. I was never really satisfied with this. Determined to work it in some how I made a plywood template of my TT, track and the round house even though on paper I could not work it in. I placed the template here and there but still could not come up with anything. I abandoned the idea and went back to work on the layout. The template got moved around on the benchwork along with other things as I worked and was now serving as something to put tools on. I was making another half hearted attempt to find a way to work in the roundhouse with the template when my son burst in wanting to show me what the puppy just tore up. I rushed out and just tossed the template on the layout. When I came back I noticed it and there was there solution. I moved it about a foot or so and had my spot and could see instantly that everything should fit. How I could not see this before I don't know as it was so obvious. So it was back to some quick plan drawing, ripping up the small amount of trackwork that I had put in and dropping the benchwork where the new river location would be. But I have room for the roundhouse now and the hole for the TT is cut. Bruce

The amount of arc is only one of two key parameters - the other being distance from the turntable pit. A 360 round house with its doors twice as far from the center of the pit would have twice as many stalls.

No. That's backwards. Given that the depth of the roundhouse is about constant (based on the length of the locos to be serviced plus space beyond the pilot for an aisle), and that the space between tracks at the round house doors is about constant based on the architectural design of the building and clearances for the locomotives, a roundhouse farther from the pit will have less angle between adjacent tracks and less waste space between the tracks at the end of the round house away from the pit. A 5 stall round house for 100' locos up close to the pit will occupy many more square feet of ground than a 5 stall round house for the same size locos placed a loco length away from the pit. Gary Q

Another option is to do what railroads in warm climates do. Have tracks off the turntable that are in the open, no stalls and no pits. The Espee had a number of setups like this. They even worked on the locos in the open.

John Allen's large engine terminal at Port on the Gorre and Daphetid had a 5 stall round house and about twice that many open service tracks around the turn table. He was following prototype practice in southern California, but he was also recognizing that one of the primary purposes (if not the only purpose - my experience is that the hostler job is about the least fun during an op session) of an engine terminal on a model RR is to show off the loco roster, and you can't see locos inside a round house. Gary Q

Well, at my club, I plan to install a 2.5' wide by 7' long 180 degree roundhouse that has 36 stalls. This is the New Haven's Southampton Street roundhouse in Boston, MA.

Paul A. Cutler III

Indeed they did. Not only that, in one engine terminal on the SP (Dunsmiur) being in a canyon used a long narrow (two stalls) engine house, also known as "Malley House". They also used some of the stalls at the roundhouse that were extended for working on the AC's (Cab Forwards). Say what you want about the SP, but they had it all in terrain and in wierd and strange motive power and OP's. Yes even big SP had armstrong Turn tables, into the late 1956 era for steam. I can't imagine it was fun to turn a consolidation by hand tho...........

John

Saw a picture of a very large roundhouse at Cologne in Germany which had two turntables side by side, and the swings of the t.t. bridges overlapped! An amazing arrangement, I wonder if it was ever modelled. Another similar arrangement was at Tanahabang in Java, but there the two t.t.s did not overlap. Regards, Bill.

Another German oddity is a situation where the new mainline alignment clashed with a full sized TT. The bridge was shortened at both ends and a segment of the well shortened to accomodate the new M/L. The cut-off bridge ends are arranged on new raiils so that they can be clipped on to the bridge, or left at the extreme ends of the larger arc. With a fair bit of tooing and frooing fairly large locos can be stabled and turned.

Greg.P.

There were all sorts of variations.

The Algoma Central RR in Sault St. Marie Canada had a TOTALLY enclosed turntable INSIDE the roundhouse (which was more or less square). Sault St. Marie is a COLD plase in the winter, with LOTS of snow. The entire facility was under one big roof, was enclosed, and heated. This DRASTICALLY alters the geometry of the whole facility, as you no longer need to consider door spacing.

As a model, however, it would be of little interest, as you couldn't SEE much of anything inside.

Dan Mitchell ============

I take it they built the roundhouse around the engines they wanted trapped in it?

The SP had a 126 foot TT enclosed in the snow sheds at Nordon Summit in Calif. in the Sierra Mtns. I talked to an old timer up there once and he told me that during WWII, an AC (Cab Forward) was derailed in that TT, UNDER the snow shed! He said they had to use jacks and timbers to re rail everything. What a nightmare that must have been!

John

"Daniel A. Mitchell" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@umflint.edu...

But the railroads usually put engines in the roundhouse front end first, so you'd see tender ends through the doors.

That's right. Normally the engines went into the roundhouse in a forward direction. Usually the doors were right next to one another, so two adjacent tracks had VERY little space between them at the doors. Due to the track divergence, there was a lot more space between the tracks at the outer end (back wall) of the roundhouse. Locos were usually put into a roundhouse for maintenance, and space was NEEDED around the loco to work. If the loco was backed in, the only thing you could easily work on would be the tender.

Unlike model railroads, the prototype usually didn't STORE locos in a roundhouse. They were there to be worked on. For storage, they just kept them outside. Sure, there were exceptions.

Dan Mitchell ============

roundhouse has to be, <

Ok you got me here, wider????? If one takes a point (center of turntable) and extends two lines (say 4 or 5 degrees) the farther from the point the wider apart the lines become. Therefore I would think the roundhouse would get wider (not narrower) the farther from the TT you put it!

two adjacent tracks had VERY little space between them at the doors. Due to the track divergence, there was a lot more space between the tracks at the outer end (back wall) of the roundhouse< You can find prototype pictures that even show the TT tracks crossing at the edge of the TT. This can be done with a model but it's tricky trackwork and the wiring would be a challenge.