When showing people the layout I now call them turnouts. When I have called them switches in the past, people have thought I was referring to on/off switches.
John C. I think you are right that it is probably more clear on a model railroad as you have explained it but I usually call them switches out of habit.
I find this all fascinating, because I distinctly remember as a kid 15-20 years ago having HO guys yell at me that it was turnout and only Lionel called them switches. Always seemed off to me, glad I was right all along and can keep calling them switches.
Having been in the industry the specialist you contacted when things went sideways was the switch man. During inclement weather you lit smudge pots under the rods on the switches. Now you turn on the switch heaters. In days gone by it was a switch tower, aka tower. Ergo…
I'm an electrical engineer by trade, deeply involved with electrical controls for my entire 45 year career, for which a portion has involved rail signals, controls and safety requirements.
As a consequence, and following on @John C.'s comments these rules apply, to keep things absolutely clear, especially when safety is involved and things must be unambiguous:
- I always call them switches.
- EXCEPT when that terminology could be confused with electrical switches that might be used to control them, or to control or monitor other things nearby that may involve or interfere with their operation.
- In that case, but only that case, they're called turnouts.
This kind of differentiation, in the controls industry while supporting the rail industry, may be why the word "turnout" shows up in the searches that @GP40 mentioned of NORAC (2011), CSX (2014) and NS (2015) rulebooks in his earlier post in this thread and other sources.
Mike
Mellow Hudson Mike, you have helped me, and I sincerely intend to follow your 3 quite sensible rules.
However, reflecting on my experience, I thought I was supposed to call switches "turnouts" and turnouts "switches." Now I will switch to see how it all turns out.
By the way, I have two resident tortoises---no, not Tortoise Switches, but the real things---heavy, slow, bulldozer powerful, long-lived, vegetable-eatin' wee beasties. Here's the dope on the terms for them, four lines from Ogden Nash's "Tortoises"---or was it "Turtles"?
Come crown my brow with leaves of myrtle,
I know the tortoise is a turtle.
Come carve my name in stone immortal,
I know the turtoise is a tortle.
Nash, Ogden. Verses from 1929 On. Little Brown & Co; 1st Ed., 1959. ISBN-10 : 0316598283 / ISBN-13 : 978-031659828
A farmer raises hogs, but we eat pork. English is a robust language. At the end of the day the only thing that is important is that we understand each other. Maybe construction crews lay turnouts and railway workers throw switches. I can't imagine laying a switch or throwing a turnout. On my model layout I have a switch tower and I have never heard of a turnout tower. My switches each have a switch stand, and I have never heard of a turnout stand. The man in the switch tower throws a switch that controls a turnout and the man on the ground throws the bar on the switch stand that controls the local turnout. In other words, the English language does not want me to say that a man has switched a switch. But if you want to say that, go ahead, I'll probably understand you either way. What I want to know is the position of the switch. Am I talking about the position of the turnout or the position of the controller? Yes!
These responses are pretty interesting and funny. I would ask my friends in our local group who are train engineers if they ran the train through two switches or if they ran through a crossover and their immediate response was always crossover. Sometimes I'd hear them struggle between what they'd say on the job and their longtime hobby of model trains. We never argued about it and saw it as a topic of amusement. We knew what each other meant, they knew every detail of both sides of the argument, and more importantly we are good friends.
Bob Paris touches on what I have heard/read - model rail magazine writers preferred from the early days of the hobby on to call them 'turnouts', so people reading the articles wouldn't confuse them with the electrical switches (like toggle switches) used to route power to the track and to remote control 'turnouts'.
I think that with all the examples cited the conclusion is pretty clear. Both terms are used with 'switch' being heard most often. As a former Northeast Corridor block operator, I can say we never used the word turnout. Even the levers on the interlocking machine were labeled 'switch' when that lever moved the points.
I think we can best explain it this way:
- REAL railroaders use the term "switch."
- MODEL railroaders use the term "turnout."
@Rich Melvin posted:I think we can best explain it this way:
- REAL railroaders use the term "switch."
- MODEL railroaders use the term "turnout."
Well… the url in the browser here says “ogaugerr.com” not “1:1rr.com” so thanks for clearing up what we should use here.
I didn’t say anything about what we should use here. I just pointed out what seems to be the facts about how these two words are used.
The track switches on my layout are controlled with mini push button switches.
CCC
Just up the road from me is a signed location called "Lewis Turnout". The NS Columbia, SC to Charlotte, NC line is parallel to the road on the left and about 100' away. It is all straight rail there now so I suspect that many years ago there was a siding there.
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