Murwillumbah Turntable

A few weeks back at a local model train Buy and Sell, I purchased a second hand turntable.  It looked to be about 60’ in size and would have been perfect for placing at Murwillumbah on my layout.  It looked like it had a mechanism, but the sign on it said that the motor was not working.  Well that would have been an easy fix, just replace the 12V motor.  The turntable scales out to about a 64' turntable.  I can put up with that.

On Friday after I finished work, I sat down at the kitchen table and started working on the turntable.  It was well assembled in between a couple of sheets of wood.  I realised that I could remove four screws and the top piece of ply would come off.  Then I saw that there were 4 screws underneath.  That allowed the bottom piece of ply to come off.  Further inspection showed that there were another four screws now revealed and that allowed the styrene outside rim of the turntable to also be removed.  Bit by bit I could peel back the layers.  I was looking into how I could apply power to the rails.  As I dug into it, it became obvious that I could solder wires to two points on the turntable base and that allowed power to be presented to the top rails.  What was interesting with this turntable, was that the whole pit turned with the turntable road.  It turned inside this styrene outer rim.  Not sure people will notice this as it is located in an interesting position on the layout.

As I was pulling the turntable apart, I was looking at how I could apply power to the turntable motor.  It became more accessible whenever I removed a layer.  Eventually the motor came to life.  I used a 9V battery.  There were a few cold solder joints and these were hit with the soldering iron and made good again.  I attached a DPDT centre off switch to the 9V battery and then to the turntable.  The turntable was working in both directions.  Although one direction was very noisy.  I might be able to oil that later.  I was very impressed by my Friday effort.  Everything was re-assembled and it was ready to take back down the shed.  One of the future plans is to remove the battery and replace that with a direct 2V feed from the layout track but which I will rectify.

The other week, I had already marked out where the turntable was to go in Murwillumbah.  I had already drilled a few pilot holes for my jigsaw, and on Saturday at midday I went down to the shed and continued working on the turntable.  I cut out the base for the turntable.  I had to adjust some of the cut lines slightly, and also cut the fascia of the slightly raised section for Murwillumbah around the turntable location.  This fascia was painted up and has started to be glued to the outside of the turntable.   So now it sits nice and snug in the baseboard at Murwillumbah.  I have also mounted the DPDT centre off control switch on the fascia near the turntable to allow operators to control it.  Next weekend I will try and run a loco onto it and off of it.

So today I had no idea where to start.  I made up three wooden buffer stops.  I cut the scale wood, stained it, and when dry, I glued it together.  These were later added to three locations at Murwillumbah.  The head shunt near the Cement Siding.  The Banana Siding got one, as I was sick of people running off the end of that siding, and now the turntable siding got teh last one.  The track leading to the turntable was reattached but one track feed came off when I was moving the track out of teh way to jigsaw the hole in the baseboard.  So that is a job for during the week – one afternoon.

I decided to bite the bullet and investigate why I was having trouble throwing accessory 1223.  This was the crossover on the narrow gauge from track 5 to track 6 in Clapham Yard.  I replaced a point motor and that provided no change.  I then started tracing wires, and it seemed that one of the two Peco point motors, had lost its common connection.  It was just sitting on top of its supposed connection to other common wires.  So I resoldered that back up and Voila, everything started working perfectly again.  I have no idea why this was the case.  The other point motor should have been working correctly.  But no.  Sometimes wiring does my head in.  This issue has been haunting me for over 12 months.  A really simple fix in the end.

Bit by bit, I am ticking off the tasks required to be completed before the upcoming December Operations Session.  I’m still waiting on a few operators to confirm their attendance.  However, the crew roster is starting to fill up.