Talk:Turntables
Add topicWhat is the source for believing that the Glan y Pwll turntable fell out of use in 1923? It is almost certain that both BL and GYP turntables fell out of use at the same time and we have eye witness accounts of the Boston Lodge turntable being used until 1934 - see reference to main page.MarkTemple (talk) 07:24, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
The source of the 1923 end of turntable use seems to be Boyd (1975) who links it to the granting of the Light Railway Order. What he says in respect of the BL unit is "Until 1923, when the line was scheduled as a Light Railway, this turntable and its complementary unit at Blaenau was in regular use".
This 1923 figure seems to have been picked up by Vic Mitchell (Branch Lines around Portmadoc 1933 - 1946, caption 23) and applied to the Blaenau turntable too (Porthmadog to Blaenau, caption 114).
But we know from Hugh Davies's letter to FRM 156 that the BL turntable was in regular use until at least 1933/4. He says, talking of England engines, that his father (Will Dafis Davies elder brother of Tom Davies) "Having turned the engine, we would return to the shed where he used to prepare the engine for the next day". In other words he reports regular use. A second source, a letter in FRM 155 from Mrs Ceri Roberts (nee Parr) confirms the fact that it was in use in the late 1920s or early 1930s. I propose to remove the Mitchell reference and the statement about the turntable going out of use in 1923 from the main page.MarkTemple (talk) 08:19, 7 March 2017 (UTC)