(The Raleigh News & Observer published the following article by Vicki Hyman on its website on July 16.)
RALEIGH, N.C. — At the end of a rail spur high on a berm above Capital Boulevard, there is a weed-choked concrete basin more than 100 feet in diameter. A bridge with a half-moon-shaped base hugs the hollow, and a spindly trestle rises above it like a flimsy crown.
It looks like a curious relic, an abandoned piece of 19th-century American railroading, fit for a museum, perhaps, but not for service.
It is fit for both. Railroad buffs would know the contraption immediately as a turntable. Often enclosed in a roundhouse, a turntable was used to turn engines around, sliding them into bays for repairs.
The Raleigh turntable, nearly a century old, is owned and still used occasionally by freight hauler CSX at its downtown Raleigh rail yard, to turn engines or, more often, errant rail cars that can only be unloaded from one side.
“You’re looking at one of the wisest investments,” said Jonathan Peery , a CSX support clerk looking on as the turntable’s motor rattled to life, sounding like a thousand beer bottles clanking against each other. “This thing has been paid for for a hundred years.”
The company that built it has been out of business for 60 .
Once diesel engines eclipsed steam locomotives for freight hauling, manufacturers stopped making turntables, and railroads started ripping them out in the 1950s.
Unlike steam locomotives, diesel locomotives can easily reverse, so engineers didn’t need turntables, opting instead to turn them around in a “wye,” a Y-shaped track layout.
At one time, there were at least four turntables in Raleigh, with many more scattered throughout the state.
Now the downtown Raleigh turntable is the only one in active freight use in the state, although visitors to the N.C. Transportation Museum in Spencer can ride on another — very, very slowly, according to Larry Neal, manager of visitor services. “You can walk faster,” he said.