turntable idea

[rtprimus]

ok, call me a cheap SOB, or just lazy, but,  I have tryed to work with the atlas N scale turn table, making it look real, Lost cause in my book on that.  I have trying to get the older Walthers model to work (not the newer 400 dollor one) and never could get her working 100%.

Now, I was reading this months MRR, and was reading about the Turntable on page 78.  Simple and ease, but I was wondering, could it, wtih a little more work, be made in to a REAL model turntable?  LIke for a center of a larger freght yard?

[tomikawaTT]

With a little effort and some detailing, the 5DC turntable featured in his month's MR could be made to look prototypical - right up to the point when the Mighty Hand of God descends from the sky to rotate it.

I have had something similar (a length of Snap-Track pivoted at the center) in use for 'way longer than I care to admit, a place-filler for the more accurate turntable I will build about the time that module gets detailed and ballasted.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[markpierce]

With a little effort and some detailing, the 5DC turntable featured in his month's MR could be made to look prototypical - right up to the point when the Mighty Hand of God descends from the sky to rotate it.

I have had something similar (a length of Snap-Track pivoted at the center) in use for 'way longer than I care to admit, a place-filler for the more accurate turntable I will build about the time that module gets detailed and ballasted.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

There is a potential solution to this "hand of God" problem with manually-powered turntables.  If the turntable is adjacent to the operating aisle, it can be turned using a disk installed under the turntable (connected to the center pivot) which sticks out slightly from the layout edge.  This permits one to operate the turntable by touching the disk rather than the turntable.  I saw this done at a layout a year ago and thought it a dandy idea.  The disk was a circular piece of plywood.

Mark

[doctorwayne]

With a little effort and some detailing, the 5DC turntable featured in his month's MR could be made to look prototypical - right up to the point when the Mighty Hand of God descends from the sky to rotate it.

My scratchbuilt turntable was designed to rotate with a hand-operated crank, working through the mechanism of an electric hand-mixer, but I found the H.of G. to be more reliable:  of course it's invisible.   Indexing is via the all-seeing eye.

Wayne

[cuyama]

I guess everyone has their own idea of value-for-money. For a large turntable, the Walthers built up is selling for under $230 on-line. Not sure why anyone would spend $400 for it. Manually-operated small PECO N scale turntables sell for under $30 on-line. I think these would look much better than would the "block of wood" in MR unless you are a supremely talented modeler. (unfortunately, the PECO model is much smaller than most of us would need.)

Trevor Marshall wrote about scratchbuilding a turntable in the April 2006 Railroad Model Craftsman ... but it looked like a lot of work and I think he may have only required alignment for one track to turn a railbus.

Another homebrew option would be to use Bob Hayden's method. He used a stereo headphone plug and jack as the pivot and an off-the-shelf N scale through plate girder bridge for an HOn30 hand-operated TT. Be sure to get the jack mounted exactly vertical! You'd need a separate method of switching polarity, but that's pretty straightforward.

Given the time one would spend tweaking the aligments for many tracks on a from-scratch solution, let alone making the block-of-wood version look decent as the centerpiece of a large yard, I think for most of us store-bought would be a better value choice. Or you could buy one or two more engines to sit on a shelf ...

Byron
Model RR Blog

[Cox 47]

This is a "cheap" turntable I have been working on...Its in N scale....A baking pan from WallyWorld....Block of wood for bridge with  Atlas bridges cut apart and glued too and 1/4 inch plug...I glued a plywood disc in bottom of pan and it has grove to mount rail in....I maybe have 3 or 4 bucks in it..Biggest cost was cake pan and it came ina package of 2 and I gave the other pan to my wife for Her Birthday [LOL].....Jerry

 

[doctorwayne]

My turntable, shown above, is a block of wood with girders from two Atlas through girder bridges glued to the sides ($2.00 each).  The track is a piece of Atlas code 83 flex and the deck planking, handrails, and control cabin was junk that I had laying around.  It rotates on a beater shaft ($.50 at a garage sale), with homemade wipers for current pick-up, along with two modified plastic freight trucks.  The most expensive part of it was the basswood bridge ties.  Here's a LINK to some pictures showing it in pieces - you'll need to scroll down the page to post #11.

Wayne

[dknelson]

A superb modeler in Illinois named Roger Miller (not the singer entertainer of that name, although the modeler Roger also played and made guitars and the singer entertainer is reportedly a railfan and or modeler) had manual turntables on his layout and frankly the hand of god was no more disturbing than when the same hand swoops down with an uncoupling stick.   Moreover Roger sometimes had only half the pit on the layout so the end of the turntable would be out over the edge of the layout.  It made for more efficient use of space on the layout itself, which took up almost all of a large outbuilding. 

There was an article about Roger's CB&Q layout in Model Railroading magazine Dec 2000/January 2001 issue.  

Dave Nelson 

 

[cuyama]

My turntable, shown above, is a block of wood with girders from two Atlas through girder bridges glued to the sides

Wayne, yours is a terrific piece of modeling. I did not mean to make the point that it was not possible to build a turntable, pit, and pivot from scratch, but that it would be challenging to make an unadorned block laying on the pit floor (as shown in the latest MR) look satisfactory as the centerpiece of a large yard -- which was the original poster's goal.

My other point was that for many of us, the challenges of scratchbuilding a good-looking, smooth-operating turntable are substantial. For those of us who don't yet have your level of modeling skill (and may never, in my case), store-bought might be the best approach for a turntable -- the appearance and function of which can be critical.

From the original poster's self-description, he might not yet have the scratchbuilding experience or interest to tackle this job ... so my point was that there are times to be thrifty and times to be smart. Good scratchbuilding skills allow those times to overlap more!

Byron
Model RR Blog

[R. T. POTEET]

Way back in 1990 there was an article in an NMRA Bulletin on converting an Atlas HO-Scale turntable to pit operation. This can be found in the index. I am certain that there was a multi-issue article--I'm almost certain it was in N-Scale magazine--on doing the same thing with an N-Scale one but, because the Trains index for N-Scale magazine does not go later than 2006, I can't locate it in the index. This leads me to suspect that it was of relatively recent publication.

Sorry if this is really no help at all but you may know of someone with recent N-Scale magazines who could help you locate it!

[Johnnny_reb]

The cheapest turntable with indexing is an "Atlas" turntable. Manuel or Powered. Search the forums for it, there are a few examples of how to convert the "Atlas TT" into a "pit" turntable.

[GGL&W]

I was thinking the same thing, like maybe make it an armstrong turntable

like the older steam lines used in rural areas.

[MisterBeasley]

Beneath this pit turntable on my layout beats the heart of an Atlas.

This is my photo-essay on how I had fun doing this:

http://www.trains.com/TRC/CS/forums/1162765/ShowPost.aspx

This wasn't exactly a weekend project.  Instead, it dragged out for a long time, but in the end I figured out how to do some things I'd never done before, and I think I ended up being a better modeller.

[shayfan84325]

I made my pit using MDF and router jigs.  The bridge is from a craftsman kit, but you could use plastic girder bridges for a more contemporary look.  Here's mine:

It is powered by a crank:

 

The crank works through this 100:1 worm and gear setup.  I bought the gears on eBay and fabricated the framework myself:

The whole thing cost less than $100, and $65 of the cost was the bridge kit.

[gear-jammer]

MrB and Phil have some nice finish work.

Sue

[steemtrayn]

So, 50 cranks to turn an engine?