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One of my favorite scratch building projects was building a turntable.  Mine was planned for and built with the initial layout in 1978 or so in Jamaica and cost less than $5.  It used a spare clothes dryer belt for rotation and uses the "ole eye ball" to line up the tracks.   A 6 inch Lazy Ssusan bearing was used to mount the pulley (made from the cutout for the TT) under the floor of the TT.  Power is fed through a piece of 16 ga twin strand wire and must be untwisted once in awhile if one direction is used much more than the other.  Still works great after 4 or 5 houses and moves.

 

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Picture above:  Notice the pigeons above the loco and poop below!

 

 

 

 

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The picture above shows the hand crank used to turn and spot the turntable.  A 10 position rotary switch determines which track will be powered and is in series with a momentary push button switch which powers that track and the TT track for operation.

 

 

Lets see pictures of your turntables, about the best operating addition one can add to any layout and does not have cost an arm and leg to provide lots of fun.

 

Charlie

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Last edited by Choo Choo Charlie
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Hi Charlie,

 

I scratch built two turntables before Ross brought out theirs.  All subsequent TT's have been purchased from them.  My first was a direct replacement for a Diamond Scale TT.  The Diamond Scale had some nice details that I reused, but the original was never built to handle diecast articulateds.

 

 

The second TT I built was made for new construction.  It was molded after the Milwaukee's turntable in Avery, ID, where trains exchanged power between steam and electric.  This project was a neat challenge because the Milwaukee turntables were so unique.  Many of the turntables on the Pacific extension were reinforced with outside trusses when the electrics were put in service.  The trusses are scratch/bashed from a couple Atlas Pratt truss kits.

 

 

 

 

Here's a couple shots of the prototype in Avery.

 

 

Great turntables.  They sure make my 027 toy train one look, well toy train.  But it sure is fun to switch out locos.  Well I went from one Marx 999 to 4 Lionel plastic 2-4-2 locos at a garage sale one day in 1978: a turntable was now possible and a must.  What a great choice.

 

I like audio turntables too and have several hooked and have lots of vinyl to play on them.  Vinyl is making a small renaissance and some new albums are being released too.

 

Charlie

Last edited by Choo Choo Charlie

Atlas roundhouse is OK; Atlas 24" turntable is junk.  Made my own 32" turntable using a powerful and reversible DC geared motor with rheostat controller.. Table used the two Atlas TT sides (a bit short), four ordinary Lionel trucks with center rail pickups for track power on a  tight Gargraves circle.

 

Cut the roundhouse lead-in tracks to fit.

 

No indexing needed as the motor control can be slowed to line up tracks by site.

Last edited by zhyachts

Charlie, you have what looks like a fine piece of handmade work there, even with the 

chicken poop.

 

Those other store models are fine but I just really enjoy looking at something a guy has

prodeced by himself using his own ingenuity.

 

And, like the lead in said "Scratch-Built" not store bought.

 

Well Done !!

Last edited by Rufus

Here is mine after the rebuild with going 2rail. My daughter actually knocked the bridge off of where I had it sitting beacuse I was working on it. I didn't get mad at her, I just didn't have it in a good spot. Also after seeing MikeCT's build really got me wanting to switch it over to 2rail and add more detail. So I guess it was a help that my daughter knocked it over. LOL

 

 It's moldeled after Cheyenne and the arch is made out of brass. The top of the arch are two 1/24 scale slotcar motor endbells with a plastic tube and two bands with wires connected made out of a nickle silver. Thats how the track will be powered. Just have to finish putting it back together and figure out the polarity issue. Shouldn't be to bad to make work.

new bridge 1

new bridge 3

new bridge 2

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