Black Hawk Turntable

[Fred H.]

Has anyone seen a photo of the Black Hawk turntable when it was located near the depot? I'm interested to see it if you do! (Can't find anything here or on the Interwebz writ large.) Thanks in advance. Anyone think it might have been similar to the turntable at Como?

[Dave Eggleston]

Fred, the best detailed that I've seen is in the Gilpin Railroad Era book, page 290. If you don't have this book, you should get it and the matching Sunset published Colorado Central book. And...start searching on Black Hawk or Blackhawk on the DPL digital collections. Good images of the yard area you're modeling in these three sources.

Here's the Gilpin book image:



Not sure why it's rotating the image, I can't get it to orient properly, but it clearly shows the ironwork framing.

That roof on the left is the hay warehouse; this is before the beer warehouse was put in (which happened after the turntable was moved). There are a few images of the turntable when it was moved to the edge of town later. I believe it's the same turntable.

Note also that the yard was bounded by a rough rocky outcrop, visible in other pictures and indicated on the Sanborn maps.

Three DPL images to look at, though none show the TT, are CHS.X4691 (looking down on the turntable location after it was removed, with the hay warehouse on the foreground right edge), X-2146 (right center edge is the hay barn and area where the turntable would be) and X-2032 (bottom right shows station and feed shop in C&S block-lettering days).

[Chris Walker]

The Black Hawk Depot location TT came from Golden, that was a Truss constructed of heavy Angles but not of the same design as the Romley TT.  The 3rd TT location at Black Hawk had a Plate Girder design. Both were 50ft'ers.

[nickgully]

Black Hawk



You can sort of make out the angles under the turntable.

-Nick

[Fred H.]

Thanks, Dave, Chris, and Nick. Appreciate the info and leads for follow up. It’s interesting to model in 1:24 (or as my friend Bernie Kempinski calls it “dollhouse scale”). I plan to build the turntable pit using a CNC router. Will do it either in one piece or two identical halves and mate them together. The CNC units I’m considering can cut up to three inches deep; one has a 33 x 33 table and the other 16 x 33. Was thinking about the smaller, but I could probably build some turntables with the larger and recoup the investment.