Round depot

Round locomotive depot of the Nikolaev railway

A round depot is a locomotive depot in which the stalls of locomotives are located radially in a circular building. Also known as “circular” or “circular”.

The roof center of the depot is covered by a turntable , which allows locomotives to be directed to their stalls located radially against the walls of the depot. Thanks to this decision, the depot manages a small number of gates (one or two from diametrically opposite sides of the building). A small number of gates and a reduced perimeter of the walls save money during construction and provide significant advantages when heating a building in winter.

Round depots were very popular in the middle of the 19th century (the London Roundhouse , Derby, and Rotunda of Luxembourg are vivid examples; in Russia, round depots of Moscow , St. Petersburg and the October Railway), but already at the end of the XIX centuries, this type of architecture is outdated and no longer used due to its inherent disadvantages:

• breakdown of the turntable blocks all locomotives inside the depot, and its size limits the length of the rolling stock;
• the layout does not allow to gradually expand the depot through the addition of new stalls;
• the possibilities of natural ventilation through a flashlight, and in a depot such as the Oktyabrskaya Railway and lighting through windows in the outer walls are limited (in a depot of the Schneidemul type, preserved in Chernyakhovsk in Russia, this drawback is absent due to the all-glass drum of the dome).