The NYC’s balloon track at Harmon, NY was used almost exclusively to turn steam locomotives. This was the steam/electric engine change point for all passenger traffic in and out of Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan. Steam locomotives that arrived in Harmon from the west backed around the balloon track, over the four-track main (and possibly other tracks at the same time), and arrived on the proper side of the main, properly pointed to take their next train west.
I’m not sure if motors (electric locomotives) used that balloon track. In fact, I’m not at all sure that it was even electrified and, being bi-directional, motors wouldn’t have needed to turn anyway.
Don’t forget the turning loops for long-distance passenger trains at Sunnyside Yard (“Harold Interlocking”), Queens, New York City, originally built circa 1911 by the PRR, and still operated by Amtrak, at about these Lat./ Long. coords.: N 40.74999 W 73.92061
The Mark Twain Zephyr was the immediate descendent of the Pioneer Zephyr. The cars could not easily be uncoupled. Not far south of the Mississippi river bridge at Burlington, the whole train was turned using a wye. The line to St. Louis hugged the river. The wye was laid along a creek that cut into the river’s limestone bluffs.
I think I remembe the MR article you’re talking about. Does “Fox River” ring any bells? That location came to mind as soon as I read your first sentence.
The initial post of this thread asks when these kind of railroad services started.
In the UK small turntables, for small locos (at that time) and wagons were provided at stations and terminals in the earliest days of railroading. The wagon turntables served goods sheds; allowing wagons to be moved 90 degrees from the running line into the goods shed. I would think that the early American railroads had much the same facilities.
Engine sheds, of one or two roads, were the norm initially but obviously some loco serving depots gew in size and had more, usually longer, roads added and the development of a roundhouse became necessary as the loco fleet expanded.
An American Heritage series book Railroads in the Age of Steam (1960) has an illustration showing a garden railroad built by Louis XIV at Versailles in 1714. Carriages with guests aboard were pushed along straight rails and were turned at corners on a “new invention”: the turntable.
Actually, no; using a turntable to turn a freight car 90º to get it into an industry would be extremely rare in the US. We are seldom faced with such restricted space, even in the most congested industrial areas.
I noted an active turntable on the Trans Coastal line on the south island of New Zealand. Unfortunately I don’t remember which town it was in. There might have been one on the TransAlpine between Christchurch and Greymouth.
