Hi all,
I’ve always been told that if you stood in a prototype rail yard and called a switch a turnout, you’d be slapped across the face and told to leave. So the other day I was paging through the CSX Air Brake and Train Handling Rules booklet and I noticed that the switches were referred to as “turnouts”. I read through some of the other rulebooks and in every case the switches were called turnouts. Can someone explain to me why this is?
In general industry-wide practice and in AREMA, a turnout is the entire assembly whereas a switch is the movable portion of that assembly. Thus one could install a #20 power-operated turnout – #20 referring to the frog angle – with either a short or long switch (longer or shorter switch points; you can buy them in at least two lengths for a #20). Generally one refers to maximum allowed speed through the turnout but puts a unique location number in the field on each switch. I think what you were told is that in a yard each switch is numbered but in the train-handling rules what matters is speed through a turnout – because the frog angle is the limiting factor. So what you heard and read is indeed consistent.
S. Hadid
Thanks a lot, I think I understand now.
Switch is more a yard term. You tell the new guy that has no idea how to switch cars to just stand at the switch and throw it when we go over it. Turnout like stated earlier is more a mainline term. “45 mph through the turnout at Becker” for an example.
Josh.
a switch is the actuly mechanical device that moves the points… as stated above…a turnout is all the other hardware… the term switching cars in a yard is more or less switching them from one track to another…and being a good or bad switchman donst have anything to do with how well you opporate the switch… it is putting the cars into the right tracks in an effent mannor with as few moves as possable… and planing your moves in a way that your not doing double work and not handleing cars any more then you have to get a track build proporly…
csx engineer
In 24 years (1964-1988) of working for 3 RRs as opr/towerman and brakeman I never heard the things referred to as other than switches. Just to make sure, I checked in 2 of my rulebooks (Consolidated Code & PRR) and the only mention I could find was switches, no turnouts. I think that turnouts might be more of a track dept term. The appeal to MRRs might be to avoid confusion between “a system of points for directing traffic from one track to another” and “a device for controlling an electrical current”. It also avoids such syntactical clumsiness as “go over to the control panel and throw the switch switch”.
Terminology is usually good for vehement disagreement because terms are often specific to region and era. But in this case the record is very clear about the difference between switch and turnout. The turnout is the “entire arrangement of switch and frog with closure rails, by which rolling stock can be diverted from one track to another,” whereas the switch is “the pair of movable track rails, with their fastenings and operating rods, providing a connection over which to move rolling stock from one track to another.” Definitions are from the Penn Central MofW Manual from 1969 but are essentially identical in Hays, Raymond, Wellington, and other standard railroad engineering texts dating to the 1880s, which is as far back as my library goes.
The engineering departments and signal departments, both of which I consult to at every U.S. Class I railroad, are very clear in making a sharp distinction between the terms switch and turnout, and all use this terminology, and it is standardized in the definitions of the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance of Way Association (AREMA), and has been so standardized for at least the last 100 years.
Operating department practice varies. Often, the operating departments of the seven U.S. Class I railroads use both switch and turnout interchangebly to refer to a turnout, but turnout is only used to mean turnout, at least at all the seven Class Is at present in the operating departments, with the officers I have worked with or worked for.
Switch is not synonymous with a machine or switch stand that operates it. That is a “switch machine” or “switch stand.” The switch stand is defined as “a device by which a switch is thrown, locked, and its position indicated.” Interestingly, the whole thing is referred to as a “power-operated turnout” or a “hand-throw turnout,” and abbreviated POTO or HTTO on track charts, signal single-line diagrams, enginee
Just tell them you’re going to “bend the iron”![;)]