I'm in the very early stages of planning the next layout. I have seen a sector plate (3 on one layout) at a show I go to, so know the basics. If I can pull off what I would like to and have some staging in the workbench area with a sector plate, it would change the on layout trackplan. Searched these forums and Crandell (Selector) comes up more often than a sector plate, which didn't come up at all as far as I went. Also tried Google, but didn't find what I was looking for, so here's my question.
Has anyone made a sector plate with a turntable at the pivot point? What I am hoping to do is to pull the train onto the plate, uncouple the loco, move onto the turntable portion, turn the loco (manually is OK), go out a vacant track, attach to another line of cars, pull out with a new train.
Thoughts and comments willingly received. As I said it's early in the planning so I have time to look over a number of options.
Thank you for your comments.
Have fun,
Richard
EDIT: Spelling never was my strong point.
cowmanAlso tried Google, but didn't find what I was looking for
I think you're looking for a sector plate
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
Some good info in your earlier thread on sector plateshttp://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/246725.aspx
Also, the Carl Arendt site has some interesting examples in tight spaces:
Sector Plates
Train Turntables
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
Do you have access to the MR Video Plus features? If so their Olympia Logging layout series had a chapter on sector plate construction. Including the pitfalls!
http://mrv.trains.com/how-to/track/2014/05/olympia-logging-series-part-6---building-a-sector-plate
Also the 1996 issue of Model Railroad Planning had an article "No Space is No Excuse" that covers not just sector plates, but other British-origin methods of moving cars in a "fiddle yard" situation. In some ways a cassette is even more flexible because the yard tracks can remain parallel.
Dave Nelson
Just shooting from the hip, I seem to recall the subject of a sector plate with a locomotive-size turntable at the pivot end having come up before.
I have also seen photos of center-pivot sector plates - five-track train-length turntables. At least one had the pivot mounted on something like a gate that swung out into the aisleway to give turning clearance from the wall at the rear of the layout. Obviously these were meant for trains like my JNR locals (12 short wagons and a small loco, fits into a cassette 56.5 inches long) not powder river coal trains.
Sector plates are very popular with our British brethren, but not very common in US practice.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - sans sector plates)
Sector plate turntable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X65MXSJfS5E interesting but probably not what you are looking for.
Do you mean this? Looks like it would work
sTransfer1_zpsqjv4ylso by Donald Schmitt, on Flickr
I tried to sell my two cents worth, but no one would give me a plug nickel for it.
I don't have a leg to stand on.
Wouldn't a transfer table, even with a turntable at one end, be easier to build?
sTransfer_zpsoavsoosb by Donald Schmitt, on Flickr
Thank you all for your replies.
Greg, yes, sector plate. Couldn't spell it any better this year than last. Google didn't seem to mind as it gave me a number of hits, though the proper spelling got more.
cuyama, forgot I had asked it, just about a year ago. Every time I see the layout that has them, I get thinking more about them again. Problem is that just as I get thinking I get too busy farming to do any work on the layout. Aging brain forgot former question. Thanks for reminding me still some good thoughts there too. Put the two together and I should be able to come up with something.
Dave, thanks for the video. Some excellent fine tuning points to what I was already thinking of.
Chuck, you may have been thinking of my last years question, you remembered better than I did. A full length train turning table would be great, BUT a huge real estate hog.
DSchmidt, that is exactly what I've been thinking, but with two approach tracks, if I can get it to work. Thinking of a manual turntable with powered track.
South Penn, interesting idea. Would eliminate the curved cuts and bends in the tracks to line them up. A definite possibility.
Thank you all again for the replies. Now if I can only remember these first two posts, the third one will be a progress report. Don't hold your breath, summer is coming, my busiest time of the year and I need to stop planning and get to doing. Isn't procrastination a wonderful thing!
Based on your original post I assumed that entire trains would be staged on the sector plate, so the secror plate would need one more track than the number of trains (that is 5 tracks for 4 trains)
If the trains are staged on a non-movable section this is probably the way to go:
Sector Plate_zpsdwufnds4 by Donald Schmitt, on Flickr
DSchmitt, another interesting possibiity.
Thank you,
What DSchmidt drew for us is similar to something shown (photographs) in the July 2002 issue of Railmodel Journal, credited to the "Twenties and Thirties Modular Railroad Club" in Southern California. Knife style electric switches were used to power the rails on the lazy-susan mounted turntable. The photo makes it look like the base of the turntable could be moved to serve any of 10 staging yard tracks, but the text only mentions serving a center track where 3 yard tracks had converged.
While the text of the article is available to those who go to the Trainlife website
http://www.trainlife.com/ it does not seem that the photos from that issue are part of the website.
A turntable which is also a transfer table, so to speak, is an interesting refinement. the yard tracks can remain parallel so yard storage is not reduced by moving the ends of the tracks close as is the case with a sector plate.
However it is also true that if a British style cassette was used instead (Peco makes a prefab one) it could be reversed and used like a turntable to any track without having to bother with the turntable mechanism.