Try it with the ?pretty which will make the output more readable. I also added the content-type header. You'll see the "acknowledge: true" output on success.
$ curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -XPUT http://localhost:9200/_template/winlogbeat?pretty -d@winlogbeat.template.json
{
"acknowledged" : true
}
Do you mean it hangs and doesn't return?
You can check to see if the template is installed with
curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://localhost:9200/_template/winlogbeat?pretty
That will return the full template.