Friends of the Rail Forum

The traverser in the workshop in Nairobi

Photos by John Ashworth 12th September 2009

Teach us - What's a 'traverser'?

A way of moving locomotives or vehicles between parallel roads without needing points. The "bridge" with the little cabin on it has a track on it. A loco is driven onto the bridge and then the whole bridge moves sideway on the rails that you can see in the pit. In the first picture, right foreground, you can see one of the roads, in fact the one that the three steam locos are standing on.

I suppose you could say it's a bit like a turntable only a turntable rotates around a point on a circular rail whereas a traverser slides from side to side on parallel rails.

There's a good picture of 2409 steaming onto the traverser here (taken from the opposite side to my photos), along with a lot of other photos of Kenyan steam. And 3020 can be seen on the traverser here.

The large traverser seen through the driver's (newly-cleaned!) window of 2409.

Photo by John Ashworth 31/10/09