Those tracks to the SW of Louisville are the Central of Georgia main, between Savannah and Macon. The Louisville and Wadley Railroad connected with the CofG at Wadley. This is about the center of the L&W/CG WYE in Wadley:
32 51 45.09N 82 24 34.49W
This link goes to a 1921 Sanborn insurance map, which shows the turntable:
The Louisville turntable was taken up in the late 1940s. I grew up in Louisville, and I never knew of a turntable until I had some correspondence in 2004 with Steve Flanigan on the subject of the L&W. As a teenager, I spend many days in one summer in the early 1960s, waiting for the three times a week L&W schedule from Wadley, and hopping aboard CG 37 riding in the Louisville area. I never saw anything regarding the turntable, so learning of the turntable came as a bit of a surprise.
I do hope the statute of limitations has run out on my cab rides.
No roundhouse facilities at Louisville. The turntable was used to turn the locomotives around for the return trip to Wadley. I believe in Clegg and Beebe’s Mixed Train Daily, they comment the L&W ran locomotive tender first from Wadley and “its return was pilot first, as God intended, and in a Christian manner.” So, it would appear the turntable was not fully functional when they visited Louisville.
Almost nothing of the railroad in the Louisville area is visible from Google Earth photos, but I know where the rails ran. &nbs
Google satellite Forrest, IL. About 1/8 mile east of state route 47 on US route 24 is a white circle on the north side of hy 24. It is an old turntable pit with the turntable still in the ground. I believe it is from the N&W. RR tracks still run E & W. The right of way N & S are still visible on the map but the tracks are gone. The bldg left of the pit is also an old RR facility.
Kaukauna, WI where the Ghost Town Fitness Center is now had been the Milwaukee Lakeshore & Western MLS&W / Chicago & Northwestern C&NW roundhouse & turntable.
You have the railroad’s name a bit mixed up, it was the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha RR. Known as the Omaha Road, its initials were the CStPM&O with official later reporting marks of CMO. Long an affiliate and then subsidiary of the C&NW, it was eventually merged into that company.
When I look a bit North Northeast of my coordinates I think I see what you see, and that may be it. When I put in your coordinates, I end up out in the country south east of Walla Walla. I maybe doing something wrong here. I live in Portland now, but I remember seeing the remains of the floor pattern of a round house just off N. 12th street on the west side of the railroad yard just north of Hwy. 12. I hope that helps. I’ve been wanting to visit WW lately, so maybe this is enough of an excuse.
I suppose that if you do get there and can do some looking around, without tresspassing! and can determine where the center of the turntable was, I would be glad to know that info. But even with my somewhat practiced eye at seeing the remains of a roundhouse, I just cannot see where one was in that area. I think only wishful thinking makes me see something at the coordinates I gave. (I tested my coordinates from my post by copying and pasting them into Google Earth and it just barely moved the view to the northeast when it was centered on yours, so I don’t know why your system sent you off to the south east!)
We seem to be assumming it was just East of 12th Ave, North of W Elm St and South of Paine St. (if Elm and Paine crossed the area in question). If you break that area in to quadrants you will see that your original coordinates are in the SW quadrant and mine are in the NE one. I would really like to be at least that accurate. You might print a copy of the Google Earth image and try to pinpoint on the photo were the turntable was and then return to Google Earth to get the geographical coordinates.
Have fun, if you get a chance to go there. I am sure it would be easier to see any remnant of evidence on the ground, but I would not hold out much hope, given what can be seen from the images on Google Earth.
In St Thomas Ontario there is still a transfer table at the Elgin County Railway Museum. It’s located in downtown St Thomas at the west end of the former Michigan Central shops just north of Wellington St and west of First Ave. I couldn’t see it on Google Earth, however I know it’s still there and occasionally in use. The MCRR yard in St Thomas also had a turntable near its east end but I believe this was removed late in the 1960’s. Penn Central track layout diagrams and charts of the of the CASO Sub in 1964 IIRC show it.
The resolution of the images for St. Thomas are too poor to really make anything as detailed as a transfer table pit, but I would be pretty sure it is on one side of that large building in the middle of that area.
The Street View photos are pretty good and show the entrance to the museum and a 2 and a half story building with the top being what I think is probably an overhead transfer crane running nearly the length (N/S) of the building. But the building is too far away to make out what is near the ground next to it.
Is the transfer table outside of that building? If so, which side?
Remember as a kid there was a roundhouse and a turntable from the GM&O years. Sorry no coordinates, but it is north of “A” Street, west of 27th avenue and east of 26th avenue. I can see where is was from google map. Just a little SW of there, use to be a maintainance shop where Martin Luther King drive crosses the RR, in the NW corner.
Just took a look at my track diagrams, and couldn’t find evidence of many of the turntables that had been there (my diagram book had been updated into the 1960s). There were a few, but I couldn’t Google-spot them.
Stone Cliff was just timetable east of Thurmond. Found where a yard was taken up, but no turntable pit.
In fact, the only one I had any success with that I didn’t see on your list was Fulton (Richmond), Virginia. I still can’t give you coordinates, but you have to follow the railroad and Virginia Route 5 southeast from the city.
If there is any sorrow here it is mine. I find a feature of interest and then zoom out until the first labled red dot appears and that becomes the name I apply. I have noted that sometimes I seem to zoom out too fast for Google Earth to get the scene updated fully and I get a city that is a bit farther away than what I should use for the name. And then there are the places where the roundhouse was out on the fringe of a town with which it is traditionally associated and another town grew up around it and so the name I find is the 2nd one and no one knows what I am refering to. (“That’s the Hickville roundhouse! It as torn down when Podunk was still a swamp.”)
If you, (or anybody!) can supply a more correct name I would be quite appreciative of the information and will update my list accordingly. I only hope we don’t get into arguments as to which name is more correct.
I have a spot in my Excel spreadsheet to list which RR the site belongs/belonged to, but ran out of mental agility trying to keep track of what to put there. Some changed hands and names more often that some folk change underwear and I ran into arguments as to the order of the names, so I gave up on that aspect.
It is similar to my trying to indicate what is/was at the location. There are some that were visible on Google Earth initially, but have since been torn down and turned into parking lots or something else that totally obliterates the evidence.
When, where I thought I saw a working turntable and fully functional roundhouse is now gone, how do I list it in a static chart, today?
When I started this I had two columns for whether there was a turntable and a roundhouse a
B&O Rochester 43.149812 -77.653629 (West Ave). Part of building still stands, but appears to have been partly demolished.## I have fond memories of visiting the head mechanic in the 1970s there, listening to him tell of maintaining B&O steam in western PA. He gave me the run of the place, and I took several photos inside and outside the roundhouse.## The Rochester NRHS Chapter acquired the B&O turntable, moved it to its museum property in Rush, NY, visible along the road at the LA&L (former Erie) crossing:## ## Turntable Rush 43.003093 -77.720237## ## LV Manchester 42.965076 -77.232506 Building still stands, turntable pit has been filled in. Yard was once about the largest freight transfer facility in New York.##
You are right. The large square building in the middle of the satellite picture is the former MCRR shops. The transfer table is on the left hand or west side of that building. From Google Earth street view, it is as you say. Table is to the left of the large building as you see it in that view, facing it, looking North.
In memory of some great hockey players who died when the plane carrying Lokomotiv Yaroslavl (Yaroslavl Locomotives, sponsored by RZD Russian State Railways) to their first game of the season. There is a Roundhouse and Turntable in Yaroslavl, Russia
Some additions from the last few replies and some time I spent this morning wandering around in southern France (I went looking for the Nuclear Plant where an explosion occurred some time today… never found the nuclear site, but did find 6 Turntables and Roundhouses! [:)] )