I must be miss reading the question . If it is going to be concrete why are there ties? If it has ties they were usually real ties , dark if new or greyer if older, but cresoted for suer.
Dave
AlreadyInUse wrote:I'm building the CMR 105' turntable. After installing all of the pit rail ties, the idea of individually painting them is daunting. The pit itself will be concrete. My question is what was the typical material that pit ties were constructed from? Just wood? Or was concrete ever used. My era is late 40's to early 50's.
Dave is right. A turntable pit built with a concrete floor usually has the pit rail bolted directly to the concrete. Pits with a dirt floor usually use the pit rail ties, which are wood. Normally a turntable with a bridge as long as 105 feet has a concrete floor.
There are some examples of the dirt floor pit that had concrete poured later and kept the wood ties on the pit rail, so as the old saying goes, "there's a prototype for everything."
The one thing I noticed in you entry is the statement, "After installing all of the pit rail ties, the idea of individually painting them is daunting." Most people would have painted them BEFORE installation. It's much easier and give a much sharper color separation line.
TomDiehl wrote: The one thing I noticed in you entry is the statement, "After installing all of the pit rail ties, the idea of individually painting them is daunting." Most people would have painted them BEFORE installation. It's much easier and give a much sharper color separation line.
Bwahahahaha! Among the many things I've learned since studying this hobby is that I usually find the hard way first. Perhaps with my next undertaking, I'll be among "most people".
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I used a piece of flex track for the pit rail in my scratchbuilt turntable - Just cut the ties between the rails to a suitable length, then fasten it in place.
Wayne
Here is a concrete pit:
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Pardon me, but I've seen turntable pits with only concrete walls and ring rail retaining walls, wood ties, with cinder fill under and around the ties and sloping down to the center bearing pillar. I don't know how the real roads handled snow and ice in the northern climes, but I would imagine an all-concrete TT pit might cause problems with freezing water blocking the drains. The nice thing about cinder fill in yards and turntable pits is the fact that water passes through it, which is why the real roads used cinders so extensively (they had a lot of 'em!).
Quite a few roads built stone TT pit walls, but the earliest roads often timbered the walls with creosoted timbers. Those of us with large collections of Model Railroader magazines from the '50s saw photos of timbered TT pits, and Paul Larson did an article on constructing them in the January, '58, issue. He had two of them on his HO Mineral Point & Northern and he wasn't alone in his choice. When I built mine for the Farley, CO, engine terminal on my old HO Colorado Western, I used stained match sticks (ah, Northwoods living: rustic, if nothing else!). The MR staff showed how to make concrete TT pit walls in one of the segments of their Great South Pass project RR.
If you left enough room between the outside ends of the ties and the pit wall, slip a sheet of thin plastic down to protect the "concrete," hand-stain or paint the ties, then fill in around them with cinders. It ain't elegant, but you can save the elegance for the indexing mechanism (nifty article by Don Peck on automatic turntable indexing in the July and August, '59, MRs). Sorry, but I tend to sound like Homer Simpson whenever I talk about steam facilities!
Thanks for the feedback. It looks like the easiest and best solution is a concrete wall and a cinder floor.
BTW: This CMR turntable kit is very nicely engineered. Not much detail, but very sturdy. It looks like I'll get years of trouble free operation out of it.
Dean-58 wrote: Pardon me, but I've seen turntable pits with only concrete walls and ring rail retaining walls, wood ties, with cinder fill under and around the ties and sloping down to the center bearing pillar. I don't know how the real roads handled snow and ice in the northern climes, but I would imagine an all-concrete TT pit might cause problems with freezing water blocking the drains. The nice thing about cinder fill in yards and turntable pits is the fact that water passes through it, which is why the real roads used cinders so extensively (they had a lot of 'em!).Quite a few roads built stone TT pit walls, but the earliest roads often timbered the walls with creosoted timbers. Those of us with large collections of Model Railroader magazines from the '50s saw photos of timbered TT pits, and Paul Larson did an article on constructing them in the January, '58, issue. He had two of them on his HO Mineral Point & Northern and he wasn't alone in his choice. When I built mine for the Farley, CO, engine terminal on my old HO Colorado Western, I used stained match sticks (ah, Northwoods living: rustic, if nothing else!). The MR staff showed how to make concrete TT pit walls in one of the segments of their Great South Pass project RR.If you left enough room between the outside ends of the ties and the pit wall, slip a sheet of thin plastic down to protect the "concrete," hand-stain or paint the ties, then fill in around them with cinders. It ain't elegant, but you can save the elegance for the indexing mechanism (nifty article by Don Peck on automatic turntable indexing in the July and August, '59, MRs). Sorry, but I tend to sound like Homer Simpson whenever I talk about steam facilities!
P.S. When I got the Carstens Publications book, "Locomotive Terminals & Railroad Structures"--an excellent addition to the library of anyone modeling steam and early Diesels, by the way--I was entranced by the photos and plot plans of dirty, gritty engine facilities, including turntables, which always catch my eye. I noticed that several of the concrete-walled pits had notches or alcoves at some point in the circumferance, usually under a continuous cap or curb, sometimes timber, with a steel plate across the top of it. These were obviously for access to the pit floor, for maintenance of the bridge and mechanisms--and maybe for snow removal. Clearances at the ends of the bridge are extremely tight, causing me to take much care in fitting the timber walls of my gallows type turntable (RMC, January, 1974--under my anti-theft pseudonym of "Victor D. Heywood"). Those access alcoves or whatever, would be a neat touch you wouldn't see on every model RR! (An alternative is to hang a steel ladder over the side of the bridge, if you haven't seen that detail!)
When visiting a turntable in the Upper Penninsula of MI (I forget just where; gee, I wish I had a memory similar to those of normal people...) I got to examine details I'd never seen, even in photos. The turntable had been motorized and I was surprised to see an electrical conduit protruding over the curb and shoot down the pit wall, via an elbow. I don't recall if it continued above the ancient cinder bottom of the pit, but when I walked out onto the bridge (there was no one about, as this old roundhouse was now used for storage by some industry) I found the electrical connection at the center of the bridge! My turntable rails' polarity was controlled by gaps in the ring rail in the pit, transferred via phosphor-bronze wipers, and the polarity of the motor leads was controlled on this prototype table by a commutator! The power was handled through what appeared to be a trolley control box affixed to the end of one of the railings. I figured I'd use a similar system, cosmetically at least, on the Mineral Point turntable if a Financial Miracle ever came about and I actually got to build my Dream RR.
If you can read this... thank a teacher. If you are reading this in english... thank a veteran
When in doubt. grab a hammer.
If it moves and isn't supposed to, get a hammer
If it doesn't move and is supposed to, get a hammer
If it's broken, get a hammer
If it can't be fixed with a hammer... DUCK TAPE!
Well, at least in steam days, there would've been lots of "shovel technicians" available to clean away the snow. Or, since most roundhouses had stationary boilers, a labourer with a hose from the steam line could make short work of a foot or two of snow in a turntable pit - it'd be fitted with a drainage system anyway, to take care of the melt water. Likewise, most steam locos had fittings on the boiler where a hose could be attached: useful for cleaning the running gear or ashpan and also for similar snow removal duties at facilities with only a turntable at the end of a branch line.