Roundhouse

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This article is about a railroad shop structure called a roundhouse. For other meanings, see Roundhouse (disambiguation).

Roundhouse in 1909, turntable in the front

Roundhouse in Uster, Switzerland

Steam locomotives sit in the Chicago and North Western Railway roundhouse at the Chicago, Illinois freight yards, December 1942.

North Midland Railway roundhouse at Derby, England, built in 1839, as it is in 2006

A roundhouse is a building used by railroads. Roundhouses are large, circular or semicircular structures that are located surrounding or adjacent to turntables. The defining feature of a roundhouse is the turntable, which facilitates access when the building is used for repair facilities or for storage of steam locomotives.

Early steam locomotives normally travelled forwards only; although reverse operations capabilities were soon built into locomotive mechanisms, the controls were normally optimized for forward travel. Some passenger cars, such as observation cars were also designed as late as the 1960s for operations in a particular direction. A turntable allowed a locomotive or other rolling stock to be turned round for the return journey.

Probably the first railway roundhouse was built in 1839 at Derby, in England, by the North Midland Railway. Some private workshops, such as that of Fenton, Murray and Jackson in Leeds, England, (1831–1843) may previously have been laid out in a radial pattern. In a guidebook of the time we are told "The engine-house is a polygon of sixteen sides, and 190 feet in diameter, lighted from a dome-shaped roof, of the height of 50 feet. It contains 16 lines of rails, radiating from a single turn-table in the centre: the engines, on their arrival, are taken in there, placed upon the turn-table, and wheeled into any stall that may be vacant. Each of the 16 stalls will hold two, or perhaps more, engines."The North Midland Railway Guide, 1842, Nottingham: R. Allen. Republished (1973) by Turntable Enterprises, Leeds. This roundhouse narrowly escaped demolition when the works closed down; the roundhouse was classified as a listed building. In 2006 there is a proposal by the University of Derby to refurbish it as an annex to the university.

Since the great dieselization era of the 1940s and 1950s, many roundhouses have been demolished or put to other uses, but a few still stand and remain in use on the railroads. Early roundhouses were too small for later locomotives: The Roundhouse, Chalk Farm, London, England was built in 1847, but was too small for its function within 20 years (it is now an arts center).

The B&O Railroad Museum, in Baltimore, Maryland, is located in the restored roundhouse of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.

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