turntable

[full maxx]

got my little engineer a Walthers modern 130' turntable for his birthday....used but it works great and even better after a little maintenance...its really cool....got it in the table well kinda...that part is not attached to the layout yet gotta get the fan track laid and tacked down but its coming right along....gotta hide it til march 25th...he's gonna flip

[full maxx]

this is just a rough layout ...nothing programed yet... but wont be long http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb165/nitroburnr/2011-02-21_21-00-28_6.jpg

[full maxx]

ok I do have a question...this turntable came with the walthers 3 stall rounh house or at least most of it....there are no tracks for the stalls so can I buy just the rails without the ties if so where or do I use track and just remove the ties to get out just the rails

[Doneldon]

maxx-

You use your own track. Just make sure that the tops of the rails are the same height.

                                                                                          -- D

[Pacific Northern]

The Walthers Roundhouse has slots for the track.

The track slots in the Roundhouse are for code 83 track.

I used several pieces of code 83 flex track, removed the ties for the track length located in the Roundhouse and left the ties on for the portion linking the track on the bridge to the roundhouse.

[full maxx]

Im thinking the proper way for a turntable is to drive forward onto it and drive forward ofd of it bein one way on anf off other thn the fan track

[rogertra]

The main reason roads ran their steam into the roundhouse smokebox first was two fold.

1)  Most maintenance work was done on the front end, so smokebox first put more space around the work area.

2)  Most roundhouses (all?) had large windows on the back wall, where the smokebox would be and where most of the work was being performed.  Very important in a poorly lit roundhouse.

[jward]

There was another thing that determined how a locomotive was put into the roundhouse. the smokestacks on the roof were intended to be above the locomotive smokestacks, you can imagine how smoky the building would get otherwise. with diesels this became a moot point. as for the turntable leads, one inbound track was used for servicing locomotives. the other leads were usually used to hold locomotives that had already been serviced, and were due to go out on trains. the roundhouse, in addition to being a repair facility, held locomotives that weren't needed right away.

[full maxx]

The way I had the turn table set up was to back on it from a good distance but decided to incorporate another entrance ....just had to rotate the pit so the entrance and exit were on oppisite sides of the no track space so the bridge would have prpoer polarity goin on and off will post pics soon....had to get trackcwith no roadbed so it would be the right height...need to incorporate ramps tocease transition to the ez track

[full maxx]

  the roundhouse is a mock up that was free with the turntable...the new one is not here yet

[Doneldon]

While railroads and even specific parts of railroads both headed locos in and backed them in, the majority pulled them in head first. There were several reasons for this. The main one, as Roger noted, was to maximize the light and space around the part on the loco which was most likely to need work and, in the case of very long loco-tender combinations, do that work indoors rather than out in the weather. But there was another important reason, too: The track ends inside the roundhouse were blocked so an accidentally moved loco couldn't go forward and damage anything. A backed-in loco which was accidentally moved would promptly fall into the turntable pit and put the whole facility out of operation for a good bit of time. It was much less likely that a loco would be backed up accidentally because backing required explicit operations which really couldn't happen accidentally. And if a headed in loco did back into the turntable pit, well, a tender is a whole lot easier to lift out of a pit than a loco. Tenders were often about as heavy as a loco when fully loaded but they weren't generally fueled and watered on the way into a roundhouse and the water, at least, could be easily drained. And the water was by far the heavier part of a tender's load.

jward - diesels didn't obviate the need for exhaust ventilation. The only advantage they offered in the roundhouse (or any servicing facility) was that they could be quickly shut down and as quickly restarted. It took a     l  -  o  -  n  -  g     time to shut down or refire a steam engine.
                                                                           -- D