I have seen a lot of photos of a turntable and roundhouse but I cannot figure out how they get the parts, needed for repairs, into the shop. I was thinking of a gon or flat being pushed into the roundhouse but this would require a straight run from a lead into the house.
What do th3y do?
On several working roundhouses I’ve seen the supplies (sheet steel, etc) are trucked in.
A hundred-foot turntable would easily hold a 40-foot gon and a 50-foot switcher. Model-sized turntables like the Atlas can’t take that much length, but a more prototypical turntable could.
Quite frequently, there would be a supply spur alongside the roundhouse on the same side as the boiler house (or shed) and the machine shop.
Really heavy repairs (and construction) were usually done in back shops, rectangular buildings which would be accessed by transfer table or an ordinary yard throat - almost always with one or more tracks that either didn’t cross the transfer table or crossed it directly from one end to the other. Big things (driver sets, cast frames…) would be delivered inside, where the transfer cranes could get at them.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with none of the above except turntables)
I’ve seen it where there is a track next to the roundhouse for delivery of lubricating oil, parts etc. but not connected to the turntable but coming from another part of the yard.
It was very common to have at least one lead onto a turntable be a straight run into a roundhouse stall. This was done for various reasons, one of which would be for delivery of supplies as you suggest. The other reasons include to ability to house a loco that was too long to be turned on the table and the ability to push a dead loco into the roundhouse or to pull a dead loco out of the roundhouse using a second loco to do the work. It was less common not to have a straight run through the table.
Some round houses have a back door also.
From where the engineer forgot to set the parking break…[:-^]
Thanks guys, That answers my question. Poor planning on my part. My Turntable leads are at right angles to the roundhouse. (space requirement). I will run a short spur to the back of the house for the delivery of supplies but the dead loco issue is going to be a problem.
There are very few supplies that a roundhouse could use that couldn’t be carried by a couple guys. Even if you shoved a gondola into a stall, there would be no way to unload it because roundhouses don’t have overhead cranes. You still would have to have a couple guys lift it up and over the side of the gondola.
If they delivered supplies by go there would be a storage area/storehouse outside/near the roundhouse where the supplies would be delivered/stored.
In diesel shops there tended to be overhead cranes so large parts (engines, generators, trucks, traction motors, wheels) were delivered directly to the shop in rail cars and unloaded in the shop by the overhead cranes.
Dave H.
Most roundhouses were for minor work and repairs and storage and readyness, out of the weather, some with a side workshop for heavier repairs perhaps an overhead crane in use.
The turntable/roundhouse allowed for less land use for storage than space taking switches to storage and servicing.
Roundhouses TEND to be for lighter repairs. For example, they don’t have those big traveling overhead cranes that the backshops do; though they’ll tend to have various “light” duty cranes inside.
That said, I’ll note that there are other entrances to the roundhouse than the “engine” doors. They’re usually double doors towards the back of the building. A lot of light stuff can come through them–light stuff being stuff a couple/few guys can carry or shove on a dolly or cart. Delivery to the roundhouse might be from a truck or an adjacent storage building or shop.
And THAT being said, supplies can be delivered on gons or flats just as you said. A straight run in off of a lead is a fine way to do a delivery and would probably be the workers’ first choice. That limits the choices of roundhouse tracks, which MAY be a problem. If it were, one could use one of those cute little shop switchers (0-6-0T)(must buy another loco, must buy another loco). If that doesn’t work, there’s using a winch or one of the pry-bar looking things to move the car.
I can see perhaps a drive wheel set (if there’s a drop pit) being delivered on a flat or gon, and I can see how it would be really nice to drop it right near the loco needing the wheel; so see previous sentences.
Ed
Wow, a veritable blizzard of instantaneous info. That’s blizzard, not lizard, Les.
Ed
Could it be possible to pull a dead engine from the turntable using some form of oversized fence strecher?
BTW I did not realize that there were no overhead cranes in a roundhouse.
It would take one heck of a winch, but I suppose it is possible.
For a model railroad, there is always the 0-5-0 and let the observer figure out how the car made a right angle turn. There is also the Emma the stegasaurus (from John Allen) 0-4-0 for a different application. [:D]
Not sure what TT you have , but 2 Bachmann 44 tonnners will fit onto an Atlas TT (barely) or a 44 ton and an old MDC "shorty " flat car will also .
I can’t see why not, but it would be better to just fix the damn thing and let it steam out on it’s own. By saying this, I am suggesting that if the engine got itself in on it’s own, it would take some extremely bad planning/luck to have it become unable to remove itself. I wouldn’t want to be the guy to tell my boss that I’d screwed up a job so badly that now we couldn’t get the engine out.
Ed
I sure couldn’t swear that there aren’t/weren’t any, but they’d be extremely rare. Overhead cranes are usually travelling cranes–they’re designed to operate on an x-y axis (with z thrown in for vertical lift). There’s no x-y axis in a roundhouse–the name says it. I’m pretty sure they’ll have what I call jib cranes, though. These will be fairly light duty cranes that have a jib that has as it’s vertical member one of the framing members of the building. Obviously, there’s a pretty low weight limit for something like this; but, still, it can be pretty handy to lift a few hundred pounds.
Now that I’ve said all that, I think I’ll backtrack on that overhead crane comment. It’s just that I think it would have to be very limited in travel and maybe also in lift capacity–maybe something like a single axis crane that spanned one track and a free space adjacent.
Also, common overhead cranes require a lot of headroom; and that’s not something that you see in many roundhouses.
Ed
If half a dozen young ladies in swimsuits and heels could push a large locomotive, I don’t see why one sturdy boilermaker with a come-along (aka chain hoist) couldn’t pull one.
And if you think it would be hard to explain why there’s a dead engine on the turntable, try explaining why there’s one with its tender in the pit…
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
During the steam era on the Southern Pacific in my area, there were two large roundhouses in the Roseville yards, one for non-articulated steam and the other for the ‘Malleys’. They were both used for general servicing between runs and ‘storage’. If locomotives had to be heavily repaired, they were hauled ‘dead’ west about 18 miles to Sacramento, where the major SP shops were located. At the time, they were the most complete railroad shops west of the Mississippi (along with the GN Hillyard shops in Spokane, WA). Locomotives were not only repaired, but rebuilt, and in some cases, simply built from the ground up (Many of the famous SP “MT” 4-8-2 classes were products of the Sacramento shops). It was quite a complex–the shops are now Historical landmarks and are now used for storing and re-building historic railroad equipment for the California State Railroad Museum. The two large roundhouses in Roseville have been torn down and replaced by a very extensive diesel repair and re-building facility for UP.
Tom