DIY Network

Authentic Turntable and Roundhouse Visit The Henry Ford museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich. From "Workin' On the Railroad" episode DWRR-108L

This real hand-operated turntable is showcased at The Henry Ford museum.

In this first segment host Chris Chianelli visits Greenfield Village, part of The Henry Ford museum, in Dearborn, Mich., to examine their impressive turntable and roundhouse.

Roundhouses were used for the maintenance and repair of locomotives, and the turntable was used to turn the locomotive around. The one at Greenfield Village is a hand-operated turntable.

And then Chris visits Jim Eudaly, a model railroader out of Kansas City who has an impressive turntable and roundhouse on his layout.

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	Figure A
	Figure B
	Figure C

Turntables and roundhouses were used for the care and maintenance of steam engines back in the 1800s, but even today there are a few that are operational--and one is at The Henry Ford museum at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, which is outside of Detroit.

The unique hand-operated turntable (figure A) featured at Greenfield Village was manufactured at such a high level of precision that two people can turn it even when a 140-ton locomotive is sitting on it.

"Turntables in the broader sense are simply designed to turn a steam locomotive around so it can travel in the opposite direction," Marc Gruether, Curator of Industrial Collections at The Henry Ford Museum, said. "They're a fundamental part of a roundhouse; however, because without a turntable you basically can't get locomotives out of the roundhouse."

The primary purpose of a roundhouse (figure B) was as a maintenance facility to move goods around. Greenfield Village has a recreation of a roundhouse that was built originally in 1884 in Marshall, Mich., for a railroad called the Detroit, Toledo, and Milwaukee (DT&M). It's a six-stall roundhouse (figure C), which means there are six tracks that come into it.

The 13,500-square-foot roundhouse is one of only seven in the country and the only working roundhouse in the Midwest that serves both as an operating facility and an educational opportunity for visitors from around the world.

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