Please help me out and tell me what this is called.
I took a trip to Bandana Square in St. Paul Minnesota today.
This is an old repair facility for the Northern Pacific Railway built in 1884 it sure stood the test of time.
The mechanic shops repaired passenger cars back in the day. It was turned into a mall back in 1984 and now it’s a medical clinic.
I have many more pictures to share with you from today but first I would like to get to the point.
When I was just a kid starting model railroading with my brother we both knew what a turntable was. My brother told me about a railroad slide table that was not as prevalent as a turntable. I know his terminology was wrong because I cannot find any history or information on it and would very much like to do so.
So please help me out what is this called so I can do some research on it as I am trying to decide between a turntable or a slide table that is apparently not the right name for it.
Exactly. They were somewhat common around plants that built railroad equipment, railroad back shops and car repir facilities where equipment needed to be moved from place to place rather than turned.
Altoona transfer table. Your options are no longer to turn the loco 180 degrees or some fraction of that. Instead you move it left or right to enter a flat front building.
There’s a good view for laying out a full shops complex in Armstrong’s Track Planning for Realistic Operation. At a major shop facility, the roundhouse was only for lighter repairs. One or two tracks would extend out the back wall of the roundhouse and lead to a transfer table, which shifted locos into one of the heavy repair bays.
Of course every railroad was different and some didn’t have a transfer table for the back shops. The Reading locomotive shops, for example, only had a couple of tracks leading in - a huge crane liftedn entire locomotives and moved them to different bays within the shop building.
I like how they preserved the Integrity of the 133 year old buildings. They left the service doors intact and open them. Then put commercial doors inside on every entrance.
I ain’t saying anything it’s no news to anyone how beautiful the craftsmanship was done back in the day. Every Tradesman had his pride in what ever he or she did
I am so infatuated with Burlington Northern as I grew up watching them when I was a kid that I didn’t even notice this apparatus in the background while I was checking out this old box car.
What is it it? It doesn’t look like the coaling stations I’ve seen.
Looks a bit small to be a cooaling tower, but it’s hard to judge how long it is from that angle. If it’s truly short, it’s probably a sand tower, though I’ve never seen a pourced concrete one like that.
As for space - yes, just take one look at the design for that engine facility. I would have no layout, that would fill up my entire basement to build all of that. Would be neat though. I have to forego the back shops to fit any sort of service facility with a turntable on my plan.
It’s late on a Sunday night and all the good boys and girls have gone to sleep.
I have Monday off with my Judy so I’m still alive and kicking. A little yip yip Yahoo has been known to go on a little bit on a Sunday night.
I will leave you with this. The first picture I took an 0-4-0 steamer. For one of the smallest steam engines it was amazing how huge it felt standing next to it.
Edit I think I will need to plan a weekend trip to Duluth to see that 4-8-8-4 Duluth missabe Big Boy again.
My money would be on the ash reciever from the power plant boiler house.
They didn’t need sand or coal at the car shop facility in any large quantity. The ash from the boiler house would be collected and dumped into a gon or hopper as the photo shows. Coal was brought up the ramp and into the building through the tall bi-fold doors. It could then be thawed out and dumped.
In this view it looks like there is a conveyor coming in from the left. My guess is that the black motor-looking device on the top of the present (preserved) structure was a pulverizer/turbine for blowing the ash into the hopper.
You can get more views of it on Google Street View.
