For those of you who have Atlas HO turntables, have you ever noticed a little play in them. You get them to line up perfect with the track one way, then turn them all the way around and it is slightly off from lining up with the track? You can actually put your hand on top of the turntable and turn it slightly. Is there some way to get all the play out or something to get as close as possible both ways and live with it? Its a fairly new turntable. I am sure its not do to wear.
Any help would be appreciated, Thanks, DON
I have this problem as well. I built up the turntable with a gallows support structure and then noticed that it started to develop this play after I had all of the tracks ballasted in place. I finally decided that making manual adjustments all the time was not good. I didn’t want to tear everything up, so I bought a special “star” tool for the center nut and bought a 2nd turntable. I opened it up and replaced the gears with the new ones. It works much better than it did, but I still have to be careful and sometimes make small tweaks to avoid derailments.
I don’t know if it is wear that produces the “slop”, but the gear replacement helped a lot, but not perfectly or likely forever.
I don’t know why more people haven’t responded to your post … let’s wait and see …
Marty - Oakhurst Railroad Engineer
Is the problem repeatable? That is, does one end of the turntable always line up correctly, while the other is always off in the same direction? Does it matter which direction you rotate the turntable?
My turntable is a pit-bash, so I’ve installed a bridge above the deck that the track sits on. I have the same problem, but it my case it’s due to a slight mis-alignment of the bridge track with respect to the true centerline of the turntable. (For now, I just live with it. One of these days I’ll re-align the track.)
I’m wondering if you’ve actually got a slight mis-alignment of the deck. It may be just, as you’ve suggested, slop in the gears, but if this is completely repeatable and happens regardless which direction you’re rotating the table, then it may be a manufacturing defect.
Incidentally, I had an old Atlas turntable back in the 1960’s. It is the same as today’s model, except for 30-degree indexing then vs. 15-degree indexing now. The old turntable functioned perfectly for many years. I still have it, and I plan to use it if I ever expand my layout and get to put in my dead-end trolley line.
I can’t say I was able to solve the issue. It is known to Atlas but they have not
issued any fixes that I know of. I ended up selling mine on ebay.