White washed turntable pit walls

[mvlandsw]

Some railroads white washed the walls of their turntable pits. Does anyone know why this was done?

Mark

[Sonofahoghead]

Just a guess.. but maybe because they had track numbers and/or other marking info on the pit walls and needed the walls to have a clear and distinct color separation from the signage and markings.  But who knows... it could also be that the Queen was coming and they wanted everything in the yard to be "just so" for her visit. Anyway, that's my $0.02 worth.

 

PS-- I hope each edit I make doesn't come back to the OP's email notification of reply since I'm still new here and have ben using this post to learn the posting layout and try out the rich text editor features.. like, 25 times.. lol.

[Semper Vaporo]

Whitewash is a wood preservative (like paint) so I would assume it was done to limit weather/insect damage to the pit walls, if they were wood... otherwise I guess it could be just a "spruce it up" function.

[MidlandMike]

Perhaps it was to make a potential hazard more visible in the dark.

[Firelock76]

MidlandMike

Perhaps it was to make a potential hazard more visible in the dark.

 

Good guess and very plausible.

I could see whitewashing or white painting inspection pits to reflect as much light as possible to the undersides of various equipment passing overhead.