Tiny Ted- Episode 6
October 19, 2019
In this episode of Tiny Ted, Ted will teach us about turntables and roundhouses. You can find both of these in our train display!
For those of you that don’t know, a roundhouse is a building where they work on trains. The reason they made it round was because it was near a turntable… which you guessed it, helped turn the train around. They became common in the early day of railroads for 2 reasons. #1 Plenty of space – land was often expensive and not always available #2 early steam locomotives didn’t move backwards very well…in fact some couldn’t drive backwards at all!!
As I was researching more about turntables and roundhouses I came across this site. Here you can find surviving structures and learn more about the history.