I have a six stall roundhouse and 15 inch turn table is there a set distance it should be at if not how will I know it's in the wright area. i am trying to line up the tracks coming from the roundhouse to the turn table before I cut the hole. Thank you for any ideas you have.
thanks again,
george
Ideally, if you were to lay a length of track in each bay such that they all overlapped at a point where they met, that centerpoint would also be the center of your turntable. Good luck with that, though. In practice, you will probably end up fudging a bit with the lengths of track in the bays by curving them a bit before they end at the pit wall of the turntable. That is what I had to do, but the curve was in the order of 45-50" in radius, so not a sharp and obvious thing.
What brand for the roundhouse and for the turntable?
Rich
Alton Junction
Place your roundhouse on a large flat surface that you can write on, i.e. a countertop with a large piece of paper extending out in front of the roundhouse. Using a straight edge, draw a line down the track centerline of one of the end stalls of the roundhouse, extending it out 15" to 18" in front of the roundhouse. Do the same in the opposite end stall of the roundhouse. Where those lines cross should be the center point of your turntable.
Rogger hit the nail on the head! The point where all the tracks come together is the center of the turntable. I built my second turntable/roundhouse combination about three years ago and layed everything out on a large table using a large sheet of butcher paper. Don't hurry! Take your time and use lots of drawings with a straight three foot ruler. I worked on my drawing for several weeks until I got it prefect. My first attempt more than 20 years earlier had a lot of problems.
I went with a CMR Turntable kit this time and their plans and drawings are terrific.
Check out my turntable and roundhouse, works great.
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/p/135-foot-turntable-project.html
My biggest problem was electrical on the first attempt and I cured that on the new one.
Mel
Mel,
VERY NICE WORK!
Hello?
Anybody out there?
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NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
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I was wondering what happened to George.