This advertisement in the 17 April 1869 issue of The Railway Times includes a cross section of a piece of particularly heavy railway equipment found in railyards. Railways had three ways of reversing the direction of steam locomotives: (1) a turntable, such as we see in the advertisement. (2) a Y-shaped trackage composed of three sections of track and three switches. (3) a very large loop. The last two required a great deal of track (and hence real estate on which to put it), so turntables appear on even the smallest railways. The need for such turntables vanished with diesel locomotives that had cabs for the engineer at both ends, and thus could simply reverse direction. — George P. Landow
Related material: An advertisement from another Birmingham firm
- Advertisement for Railway-Related Iron Products
- Stroudley’s Patent Wrought Iron Ramps for Re-Railing Rolling Stock
Bibliography
Railway Times. 32 (1869): 219. Hathi Trust online version of a copy in the University of Michigan Library. Web. 4 September 2018.
Last modified 4 September 2018