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!

turn table/roundhouse

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.