Wrong Way Round

So, says the information board for the former GCR turntable at Penistone, describing the need for steam locomotives to face the direction they were going in. The heritage lines have also found them useful - at Quorn, Minehead and Churston, to name but three. The NRM at York provides demonstrations in the Great Hall, itself a former roundhouse, where the lines were typically arranged star-shaped around the central turntable.

Thanks are due to my friend, Andy, who came across the Penistone example during a recent bike ride, and passed on the pictures. Trawling through my own photos, I found my only turntable example was actually quite poignant, showing how - once balanced - one man could turn a Stanier Black Five, in this case, all by himself. The painting by Mike Jeffries is an appropriate reminder of how we remember them from the 1960s.