Gigantic Freight Car classification turntable?

[BaltACD]

Object point that railroading and recreational pharmacuticals don't mix.

[edblysard]

HA ha ha ha haaaaaa....

No, wait,  uh...ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa....

 

Ok, I got it.....man, for a second I thought Futuremodal had found a buyer....

This is about as nonsensical a concept as I have seen in a long time.

As pointed out, if the table breaks, you're shut down till it gets fixed.

And all the cars entering the table, or yard for that matter would have to be pre-blocked in big groups for this to function efficiently...single car switching on this would take hours.

 

Oh well, at least someone is taking a idea and trying to make it work...but with railroading, as Larry already pointed out, KISS works best.  

[StillGrande]

It makes absolutely no sense to me.  Instead of just cutting a car out you need to have the turntable do it.  What do you do when it has  a problem?  At least with a yard if a turnout is defective you just avoid it.  With this thing if it breaks you go home.

HA!! you hit the nail right on the head... That's what was missing while I was watching the video on the website.  No fault tolerance, or none that was apparent to me.

I saw the same thing.  When it breaks you are out of business until the part is shipped from who knows where.  There are no work arounds like with conventional yards.  Seems to me someone would have tried it for more than just a locomotive in the last 140 years if it made real sense.

[edbenton]

Think about the sheer size of the pits needed for the turntables.  Then the bearings needed to make them be able to spin the motors and indexing plus the fact during the winter the snow ice slush and other crap will build up and jam it up.  RR got rid of Roundtables once already I do not see them building them again to sort trains what they have works plus you realize the size one of those would have to be for Bailey in North Platte.

[youngengineer]

Model railroad ok, outside in the cold the rain, snow, wind, heat, not likely to work very well. I think the learning curve for the yard masters, and crews would be very steep, and there seems to be a tremendous amount of people involved in this process.

[mudchicken]

Not practical.

[TimChgo9]

It makes absolutely no sense to me.  Instead of just cutting a car out you need to have the turntable do it.  What do you do when it has  a problem?  At least with a yard if a turnout is defective you just avoid it.  With this thing if it breaks you go home.

HA!! you hit the nail right on the head... That's what was missing while I was watching the video on the website.  No fault tolerance, or none that was apparent to me.

[ndbprr]

It makes absolutely no sense to me.  Instead of just cutting a car out you need to have the turntable do it.  What do you do when it has  a problem?  At least with a yard if a turnout is defective you just avoid it.  With this thing if it breaks you go home.

[TimChgo9]

Okay, so the operation is pretty impressive..  But, I see some problems.  First of all, could more than one track feed the turntable, or is feeding the turntable strictly a one track operation? How much computer support would be needed to precisely track each car?  How much congestion would this cause as trains entered the turntable.  Wouldn't there be a need for a  staging yard for trains waiting to be "processed" as it were?  What about getting an outbound train ready to go, while an inbound train is being processed?  Or could that even be done. What about land usage?  There would still be a need for tracks to hold the cars, correct?

I think we need someone like Nbrodar to chime in here, I can see this working to a point, but for a larger yard like Clyde, or Proviso, or even Eola, would this be an efficient way to build and classify trains.  I get the feeling something is missing in the operation that the website shows for this turntable. 

[trainfan1221]

Something tells me this is one of those things that is better in theory than actually really working.  Quite frankly it would have to be so big that I can't see it taking up that much less space than a regular yard, and what about those little thingies that move the cars around?  Although a life size one would be interesting, I don't see it being a major new step in railroad technology just yet.

[tree68]

KISS

Definitely have to be computer choreographed. 

[carnej1]

 I found this site whist surfing the 'ole "interweb"

http://freightturntables.com/home

 What made me think that they may be serious is the major industry players (at least equipment manufacturers) who are affiliated. They seem to be well along on planning the first installation. At over 200 million + does this make any sense? I guess the big selling point is that it uses much less real estate than a regular classification yard. And they tout speed of operation as well...

 Love that animation....Someone needs to build a working scale model!