Re: Chama Turntable and Roundhouse -- 1998 Friends Study

I would like to point out that, contrary to the apparently prevalent views on this forum, the primary purpose of a turntable at a roundhouse is not to reverse a locomotive's direction; it is to line up locomotives with their respective stalls. If you have a roundhouse with a significant number of stalls, then you need either a turntable to line locomotives up with with where you want them to go, or you are going to have to have a yard full of switches to get locomotives to the stalls you want them in, and you would have to have impossible track curvature to line up rails at the door of each stall. If you have a lead which runs up to the roundhouse at a strong angle instead of straight on (such as at the Colorado Railroad Museum), the switch solution becomes unworkable and you have no choice but to install a turntable. Turntables were invented to do away with all those switches and the labor they entail, as well as to simplify adjacent yards.

Mike

Durango, 5 August 1951. R. Richardson photo...