Transfer table

A transfer table or traverser is a piece of railway equipment. It is similar in function to a turntable, though it cannot be used to turn equipment around.

A transfer table, also known as a traverser, consists of a single length of track that can be moved from side to side, in a direction perpendicular to the track. There are often multiple tracks on one side of the table and a single or multiple track(s) on the other.

They are often found in yards with locomotive maintenance facilities. The table allows a shed with multiple stalls for locomotives or carriages to be served by a single track, without the need for points that could take up a much larger area.

In Europe there were traversers at the terminal platforms at Birmingham Moor Street Station and at the former Gare de la Bastille terminus in Paris. These were installed to release locomotives from arriving passenger trains to the adjoining track. They had three parallel tracks on the table so that whichever positions the traverser was in an incoming passenger train would not be faced with a void.

Traversers were used at metropolitan termini located in confined sites, such as Kew and St Kilda in suburban Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, which worked only two tracks.

In 2013 the Port of Felixstowe installed a traverser across nine tracks at its new North Terminal as ordinary points could not be fitted while allowing 35-wagon trains of shipping containers.

Systems like the Locher rack system do not allow normal switches and transfer tables are used instead, as on the Pilatus Railway.

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