Last Person Who Understands How to Operate a Roundhouse Turntable Refuses to Retire

Walter Kingpin, 84, the last living person capable of operating the 1923 Armstrong manual turntable at the Strasburg Rail Road in Pennsylvania, has refused to retire despite the railroad's increasingly urgent succession-planning efforts. 'I'll retire when the turntable retires,' Kingpin said, manually rotating a 90-ton steam locomotive on the 60-foot turntable using a technique he describes as 'leverage, timing, and 67 years of knowing exactly where to push.' 'And the turntable isn't going anywhere. It's bolted to the earth. So neither am I.' The Armstrong turntable, a manually operated device that rotates locomotives by using a long lever arm pushed by human effort, was standard equipment at American railroad engine facilities from the 1880s through the 1950s. Most have been replaced by motorized versions or demolished entirely. Strasburg's turntable remains manual, and Kingpin remains the only person who can operate it without, as shop superintendent Marcus Flange delicately put it, 'launching a locomotive off the end of the table into the parking lot.' 'We've tried to train replacements,' Flange said. 'Three so far. One gave up after an hour. One sprained both wrists. The third got the locomotive 90 degrees off-center and we had to call Walter in from his day off to fix it. He was not pleased.' Kingpin attributes his skill to 'starting young' — he began working on turntables at age 17 in 1959 — and to 'an intuitive understanding of rotational inertia that cannot be taught in a classroom.' 'You have to feel the locomotive's weight shift,' he explained, placing his palm flat on the turntable rail. 'Right there. Feel that? That's 90 tons wanting to go left. You don't fight it. You negotiate. The locomotive goes where the locomotive wants to go. Your job is to make it want to go where you need it.' The railroad's insurance provider has requested a succession plan. Kingpin's response was a handwritten note reading: 'I am the plan.'