http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/cgi-bin/www2i/.visual/img_med/dir_77/d_08123.gif
Thought there may be some interest in this picture. It is a roundhouse/enginehouse without a turntable. Site is Eholt, near Greenwood/Grandforks BC.
Since that’s obviously steam power, do you have any information on how they turned the engines?
A wye?
A turntable somewhere else?
They didn’t, they just ran them backwards?
I would assume there was a wye nearby.
The only large railway terminal area I am aware of is Prince Rupert with the Grand Trunk Pacific, A large yard and engine house with no turntablel, but there was a wye nearby. In fact the wye is still there although the engine facilities are gone.
Don–
On Southern Pacific’s Donner Pass line during the steam era, there was a large 7-stall enginehouse in Colfax, CA, where helper locos were kept to assist Cab-forwards up the steep 2.4% between Colfax and Emigrant Gap, a distance of about 40 miles. The helpers were generally 2-8-0’s, which were coupled onto the lead engine and turned on a ‘balloon’ track at Emigrant Gap for their return trip to Colfax. There was no turntable at Colfax, however there was a wye track to turn the returning helpers, however I understand that the tight radius on the wye only permitted turning locomotives not larger than a 2-8-2.
My great-uncle and namesake, who worked for the SP took me through the engine-house when I was a little boy, and to a 10-year old, the place was just HUGE! After steam disappeared from the Donner Pass route around 1955, I believe the engine-house was used for a number of years to house diesel helpers. It was quite a structure.
Tom [:)]
The DM&E has a three-stall roundhouse just north of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City, SD. Some time prior to 1979 the turntable was replaced with a three-way switch. In the 80s there was still evidence of the rim of the turntable pit.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
The Lehigh Valley Railroad had two enginehouses of similar dwsign on the old Mahanoy and hazleton Branch, the first being at Hazleton, PA and the second at Delano, PA. Locomotives assigned to hazleton could be turned on any of four wyes in the area, and the power at Delano was turned on the wye there.