Turntable & Round House Selection

[glsummers]

Just to add a little more to what everyone has already said. I installed the Walthers 90' turntable and it was easy to index and a great addition to my engine faciity. I have no problem recommending their TT. You can see mine at http://www.larrystrain.org and look at the engine facility. Larry

[UP Railroader]

Hi all,
My plan is to model A mix of fictional places with real railroads. somewhere in the desert with minimal scenery. Having railroads modeled like Bertlington Northern, Southern Pacific, Union Pacific and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe{ATSF} and Frisco. the largest engine that i will shoot for is a 4-6-6-4 Challenger. thats the reason for the 130' Walthers TT, As for round houses i am still wondering what to buy. I will advise that i should spend a year to think about what my track plan will look like and what and where i would like to model these trains.
Any further sudgestions are welcome at any point.
Thanks,
UP Railroader

[murfling]

I have the Walthers RTR 130' to turn my Big Boy and my whole fleet of 4-8-4 Class J's.  (I think I'm up to like 6 of them) The indesing control is fantastic. You can pretty much program it to stop anywhere. (Just remember to program both ends of the bridge - sometimes one way won't line up quite right from the other) and I have the Walthers roundhouse kit with a total of 9 stalls. The only caution I advise, if you don't have a lot of room, plan the troundhouses carefully. Just my engine yard is almost 4x6, but it catches you attention right away.

[MrMunchkin]

stay away from the above mentioned "economey Walther's 90' kit" it's worth  just about what it costs. The Bowser is more work to build but when you're done you will have something that works, I have never seen the Walther's rtr turntables so can offer no opinion on them but as one previous poster points out, there must be a reason for the big price difference between the price for the 90' kit and the rtr one.
If your turntable is somewhere that you can see it well and you have good eye sight you don't need an indexing system, just power it with one of your old power packs left over from before you switched to DCC and you should have no problem stoping it where you need to

[r.cprmier]

Munchkin;
You say there is a large price difference between the 90' and the 120' table.  I thought they were both RTR; that pretty much keeping the prices fairly close. 
I read a really neat narrative a while back concerning building a turntable from scratch.  While humourous, it also gave me pause to consider "scratching a table".  I am looking at all three RTR-Walthers, Bowser, and Diamond.  Building a working mechanism sounds like it may be inviting disaster; also that I have enough to do without messing around with the intricacies of such an exacting mechanism.  I will buy one, do as they say, and it should work.

The Old Reprobate