The Turntable

The turntable was a common, but very important, device that could be found in most terminals, large and small, during the steam era. These would often be found set up alongside roundhouses in order to facilitate movement into and out of the semicircular building in order to store steam locomotives and perform light maintenance on railroad equipment. During this time steam locomotives were operated most efficiently in the forward direction and thus had to be turned every time if, for instance, they were to make a return trip (or for a myriad of other reasons). In many cases a turntable was more practical to build than a wye, which took up much more ground.

Sellers Iron Turntable

Turntable where relatively simple pieces of infrastructure. A large, circular five to ten foot pit was dug out in which a standard span was placed (not unlike a bridge span). Around the edges of the pit a rail was placed and the support span usually had wheels attached to it at either end in which to track along it. This rail really was only there to help support either end while equipment was moved on or off. Also, at the center of the pit the span was placed on some type of central anchor hinge. Finally, in later years as the structure became somewhat more sophisticated a small operators shack could be found on one end where a worker would be located to operate the device.

The turntable at Marceline is one of the centerpieces for the layout, and will add greatly to the operational play-ability of the model. Not surprisingly, early turntables were very small, sometimes just 30 feet in circumference since nothing larger was needed with the relatively small locomotives and cars in use during much of the 19th century. The Atlas hand powered turntable seemed to fit this bill perfectly, and seeing as I already had one on hand, well...away we went.

The turntable pit was carved out of the inch thick foam, down to the wooden bench-work. To make this easier, the pit was placed on a point where two pieces of foam met. That way, all that had to be done was two half circles carved out of the ends of each piece, rather then carving a full circle in the center of one piece. The pit was lined with strips of bass wood to bring the turntable deck to the correct height, and then the modified Atlas turntable was dropped in.

The original plan was to take my modified Atlas Turntable, and place a motor underneath it from an old disused locomotive. However, we kept encountering problems with gear ratios. Either the turntable went too fast, or there just wasn't enough power to spin the table. 

I had settled on an early design known as the "Armstrong" turntable as my prototype. It gain this name due to the fact that they required a worker manually pushing the device in one direction or the other. I had played around with making the turntable a Sellers style iron turntable, which was popular in eastern regions. But I've always been a fan of the wooden gallows style. An example of the gallows turntable can be found at the Nevada State Railroad Museum where they use it to turn respective 19th century locomotives.

Current Track Plan

The jury is still out on that for the moment. For now, there is still much tinkering to be done.