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Roundhouses and trains
Topic Started: Jan 13 2007, 04:41 PM (199 Views)
Ali
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Ortonologist
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Split topic from

http://forum.bethorton.org.uk/index.php?showtopic=1493

You mean America's so big they never needed to turn the trains around? :P
Now you're sittin' on a Paris train, laughing at your own jokes again
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Ali
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Ortonologist
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There's only one thing for it! Check out Wikipedia on turntables:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turntable_(railroad)

Interestingly, ones still in use are more common in N. America than Europe!

Now you're sittin' on a Paris train, laughing at your own jokes again
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rc.cope
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HA! Not really...but most of that stuff goes on in big switch yards, where I dare not venture. It's really that the whole country is so darn young, compared to England and Europe.
I know when I used to take the South Shore Line into Chicago, the train would reach the end of the line, and instead of turning it around, the conductor would just run the train back to Indiana in reverse.
The train ran on electricity, and was designed to operate that way. Also, if you polled the population here in the US, I would venture to say a good number of people here have never even been on a train!
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
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Ali
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The wiki piece explains why the turntables are necessary for steam trains. Clearly they are not needed for electric or diesel, so they have largely gone out of use in our lifetime, Rob, with the demise of steam power.

Although presumably they are still needed in parts of Africa and India, where I believe steam trains still run in earnest.

I can clearly remember Bristol Temple Meads station in the later 1950s, with a train at every platform at all times! The moment one pulled out another would arrive to disgorge its human cargo! That's the level of service we used to have in those days! Smelly, sooty & noisy in the extreme - I loved it to bits!!

I bet at that time the old steam railroad was still of major importance in the States, before the Greyhound bus took off?


Now you're sittin' on a Paris train, laughing at your own jokes again
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rc.cope
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One of my main objectives is to take the Am Track train out west and back. I know that the train stops at the entrance to Glacier National Park in Montana....which happens to be the most beautiful place on earth.
I am not even all that concerned with the price...that is how much I want to take that trip.
There is also a train that runs across Canada, which is equally pretty. I need to do some research and get all this on my "to do" list.

I have had a nostalgic facination with trains my whole life. When I was a kid growing up in Miller, the train used to run back and forth behind our house twice a day and at night. We used to hop it and make like we were hobos. My dad used to get so pissed off at me, and rightly so...they are nothing to fuck with. I'm sure Ali can attest to that!
One day my dad and I were standing out back, and the train came by at breakneck speed. There was a chain swinging off the caboose. Had anyone been standing there, they would've been hacked to death. My dad turned to me and said; "That is why I don't want you hopping trains!" :peace:
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
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Ali
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When I was fourteen I taught myself to play blues harp on trains.

Every journey, even cross-country trips many hours long, I would stick my head out of an open window and blow up a storm on my harmonica the whole way!

Quite why my head is still attached to my body I am not sure! :rolleyes:

Now you're sittin' on a Paris train, laughing at your own jokes again
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rc.cope
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I can rememeber hot summer nights...my brother and I would lie in our bunks at night listening to the radio...the train would come by about ten o' clock...and we'd lie there listening to the clickety clack of the rails...and that whistle would blow from what seemed like 100 miles away.
If we were lucky, it would be a long train, and go for a long time. The sound of the whistle is a lot like that of a harmonica...the wind just takes it forever... :rolleyes:
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me, than a frontal lobotomy.
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TJ
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This isn't about roundhouses turned into musical theaters, but I found this use of an empty old building pretty hilarious!
"Happy Hallucinations, Honeys!"
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