OK guys, I’ve come up with this as a little HO scale diorama for my room. I only have a 3’ square space to work with, so things are really limited as to what I can do. Now, the entire plan for this is to just have a plausible roundhouse and turntable that may be eventually incorporated into a larger layout (I say “may” because it’s only a 90’ TT, so it mught be too small in the future, and using nearly 2’ for the 130’ one is out of the question). As a courtesy to everyone involved, please don’t try to convince me to switch scales. I know that there are other scales better suited to the available space, but the club I’m in is HO scale, and the kit pieces are microscopic enough as it is[:-^].
The method to my madness:
BLUE tracks are the TT and roundhouse
TEAL tracks lead off to the backshops
GREEN tracks come from the rest of the facility (coaling tower, ash pits, wash racks, whatever)
RED/BROWN tracks started out as the degree markers to keep everything on 10 degree centers, they are there to use for adaptation and/or expansion purposes or external “storage tracks” (though their lifespan is determined by input from you guys)
The plan:
FYI:
The “North” (Top) side is against a wall, the “East” (Right) side is against a wardrobe (so about half accessable), the other two sides are completely open.
Again, I know it isn’t much - but my main purposes for this are to learn how to do believable scenery and to have a nice display case of sorts for my (meager) fleet of locos. The layout will in all likelyhood be powered (DC) so I can get the locos i
I would check out the entire length of the turntable plus leads plus roundhouse.
A 90 ft turntable is nominally a foot in diameter.
According to the Walthers catalog, a modern Walthers roundhouse is 17.75 in deep (20.125" with the extension) and the front of the roundhouse sits about 12 in from the center of the pit. Add 6 in for the other half of the turntable. That makes the whole shebang 35.75 in deep ( plus the framing and approach tracks.
Bottom line if you use a modern roundhouse you won’t be able to fit it on a 3x3 board.
The “regular” roundhouse #3041 is 14 in deep and sits 10 in from the center of the turntable. adding the 6" for the other half of the turn table that makes the regular roundhouse and 90 ft turntable 30.5 in deep. So to make it fit, you will have to either put the turn table where you have drawn it and cut the back off the roundhouse or put the turntable down in the corner of the 3x3 and the roundhouse diagonally opposite from it.
Or use another roundhouse with much, much shorter stalls.
I would go to the Walther’s site and look for the “footprints” of the roundhouse and turn table and then draw them on paper and decide where I could position them on your 3x3 first. it may change your mind on what you do.
Now if I was going to do it, I would take the 3x3, cut it in half and make a 18" x 72" long diorama and have enough room to model the roundhouse and the turntable and the coaling tower and the sandhouse and a couple ready tracks and actually be able to operate it to boot.
Hmm. By my (possibly poor) math, and the diagrams on walthers website, I get 14" for the TT +5.125 for the RH lead + another 14 for the RH itself (unless their diagrams show the “modern” RH being used). In my drawing I forgot the 5" for the RH lead [#oops].
I will probably end up moving the entire thing down and to the left, so that the three tracks in the upper right corner will only have the RH covering them. Looks like I will also have to rotate it a bit to get the one track dead-center on the corner.
As for cutting it and making it 18*72" - I can’t. I would LOVE to pull that off, but I just can’t. Guess that I wasn’t clear enough in the initial post that I ONLY have this 3’ square space to work with. So, operations will be limited to the club meetings… until such time that I get done with school and can afford adding a leg off one side or something…
Edit:
Perhaps something along these lines…
blue is the tt/RH
teal is the machineshop and lead tracks
green is just there as a spacer and might become something in the future
red/brown is the external engine storage/ inspection pits maybe
You can have 2 18x36" pieces. Work on each separately Store them side by side. When you can put them end to end you get waaaaaaaaaay more operationa and capability. Plus way more flexibility for working with a club layout.
I didn’t think of it that way Dave. I’d have to toy around with it though to see if I actually have the free space to actually set things up in that manner. I’m pretty sure that I have the linear 6’, not so sure on the 36" along the entirity of that though (although I could sit on my bed…). Definately worth looking into…
As for the club layout, these modules aren’t affiliated with it.
I did take some printer paper and lay it over the 3’ space I was thinking about, so I could make a template to play with, and the available “storage space” is actually closer to 38" square. Hard to measure accurately with a ruler when you have to move it a few times…
Do you plan to ever either attach this module to a larger layout, or to re-use the turntable and roundhouse elsewhere?
If not, you might consider using an Atlas turntable and roundhouse. The turntable is only 10 inches across with its base, and the roundhouse is also smaller. Of course, it’s a shorter turntable and only suitable for shorter engines. I’ve got this combination on my layout, but I’ve only got one engine (a Hudson) which won’t fit on it. I can even put my Proto 2K 0-6-0 on the turntable and take it for a ride. Ultimately, the small size does limit what you can do with this combination, but it is an option if you’re tight for space. The components are a lot cheaper than their Walthers counterparts, too.
The Atlas turntable is a deck, not a pit. I “pit-bashed” it by adding a bridge and sinking the whole thing down into the layout base. The September MR has a similar pit-bash project illustrated. Note that this isn’t exactly the “easy” route, but I had a lot of fun doing it.
At the very least, I hope to use the TT and RH elsewhere on a different layout. If I can cram the entire module into a larger layout, all the better [:)].
My largest engine is a Niagara, and I also have Mikados and a Hudson, so the Atlas TT and RH are definately too short. Though I could feasibly pit-bash it to be 90 or 100’ long by using a longer bridge track, right?
To stretch an Atlas pit-bash, you would have to do some additional work on mounting the drive mechanism. As it is, the motor drive is only about 2 inches from the outer edge of the bridge, and it would get in the way if you built the bridge any longer than that. This kind of shows the problem:
The Atlas also indexes at 15 degrees, which matches up with their roundhouse. Most other roundhouses use a 10 or 12 degree spacing, so you wouldn’t have a nice radial path from the turntable to the stalls. Your big engines wouldn’t fit in the Atlas roundhouse.
OK, I toyed around with the dimensions and things of the table vs the room, and I can’t really have it in any configuration other than the 38" square. Bummer.
Looks like I’m going to just have to TT/RH setup like I’ve already posted.
Arthill - I presume that you are talking about the lowre right corner when you made reference to the “other long corner”.
Since there’s so little here, I might try to see what else I can come up with (ie backshops, entrance tracks, wash racks, ash pits, etc). Onward to plan 3! …or something like that…
