Hey. i’m back. My LHS has the atlas turntable and roundhouse, and i am thinking of getting them. i was wondering (keeping in mind i don’t want a flame war about how it is not a particular prototype of anything etc) about a few things.
How reliable is the turntable itself. ie will it break after a week, a year, 10 years and so on (think in a 1000 years time from now people finding it and still using it!!!
How hard is it to motorise it.
How many locos will it not be able to handle due to it’s size.
How hard is the roundhouse kit to assemble, and line up with the turntable.
The turntable on my layout is an Atlas ready made mechanism. I added a gallows bridge and wood planking to hide / cover the plastic planking that comes with the kit. As far as motorizing it. Atlas sells a motor unit to fit their turntable. The motor unit includes a small shed that can be used to hide the motor. The motor uses 12 VDC, and can be operated by using a DPDT toggle switch. As far as realiable, it’s been working for over 10 years with no problems. The only drawback is in its overal length (9.00 inches). So you are limited to the type of equipment that can use it.
if i recall correctly from an old discussion here the atlas turntable at 9" long is 65’ in HO , and should handle anything up to a 2-8-2 with no problem , maybe even slightly bigger than that . 2-8-8-2s just aren’t going to fit [:)] .
in real life as long as all the wheels were on the turntable it was ok , having the couplers overhang wasn’t a problem
And, you can easily adapt it to make it larger. Just build a new deck, and then substitute a longer piece of track (or sectional track) and wire the new piece to the old rails.
Ex: Glue a 12" piece of straight track exactly on top of the 9" piece built into the turntable, then hid the difference with strip wood. True, it will now be a bit taller, but that can easily be hidden with scenery around the pit.
Reliability: they’ve used the same mechanism for ages on this thing. I have one I bought in the 60’s that will still work.
You used to be able to buy a motorizing kit, they may come with it installed now.
It is 9 inches long and can be enlarged as stated above.
Most Atlas kits are easy to assemble, and the distance from turntable to roundhouse will be pretty much set by the kit design.
The only other thing I’ve heard people complain about on the turntable is that it doesn’t turn steadily, it stops at every stall location. This is probably why the mechanism and alignment are so reliable on this unit, but some people find this objectionable.
I had an Atlas turntable on my teenage layout from 40 years ago. When I unpacked it, it still ran fine. The motor drive was old and unreliable, though. (It was a belt drive, like the old Athearn hi-fi drives, even using the same belts.) Even though the old turntable still worked, I replaced it with a new Atlas to get the 15-degree indexing versus the original 30-degree indexing.
The motor kit mounts simply and easily, and the new one has been perfectly reliable so far. The turntable itself automatically accounts for track polarity as you turn it, so you don’t need a separate reverser if you’re using DCC. Some other turntables do need one.
I’ve got the roundhouse, too. It aligns perfectly to the turntable with the “apron” provided as part of the roundhouse floor. The kit is a bargain, with reasonable detail for a good price. I spent about a month putting mine together, and I’ve still got exterior work to do on it. The kit contains no interior detail, so I put a lot of time into that. This is a picture looking in from the turntable:
The roundhouse is expandable, but the only “expansion stalls” would be another complete kit, and you would have to do some kit-bashing of the floor to do anything other than add another 3 stalls.
As Bob did above, you might want to disguise the turntable. I don’t have the URL here, but there is a good tutorial out there on turning one of these into a true pit turntable by building a bridge and mounting the whole thing below the layout. Maybe somebody will post that for you, or I’ll look it up when I get home. Edit: Sorry, my bookmark at home came up as a stale link. Anyone else?
As has been already said, this TT is reliable and rugged. It can easily be motorized with the available kit. Also, but not mentioned, the indexing is spot-on every time. The thing about the indexing is this; it uses a cam lock type mechanism, which means you stop for a moment at every position as you go around, whether you have a track there or not. Fortunately, there are less available positions on this TT then others on the market. There are still plenty available, but because of the degree spacing there are a few less. Also noteworthy is that because of the power distribution setup on this thing it can run DC or DCC right out of the box; no need for a reversing module. If you do run DCC, you will need to reaquire your loco when the polarity flips, and, although I don’t run sound, I’ve heard that the sound has to be restarted, and that would make sense.
Most of the objections I hear about this TT are about the looks. It is a type of TT not used a lot on the prototype. Many people like the mechanism though, so they make a TT pit and modify a bridge and mount the whole thing on top of the Atlas mechanism, much like scoobster suggests. Others dress up what’s already there like Bob did (BTW Bob, very nice work!).
The roundhouse is not to hard to build. To place it on the layout, just lay out your tracks first and place the roundhouse on top of them.
As far as I know there is no cheaper option if you want a TT. If you have the room a turning wye might be another option that would be cheaper, but not a lot. Most other TT’s are much more expensive, and much more elaborate. This can be a good thing in that it looks more typical and doesn’t stop at every position, or a bad thing in that when it breaks down it becomes a maintinance nightmare. For me, I’ll take bulletproof every time over bells and whistles.
EDIT: These guy’s beat me to the punch! Most of them posted
I have a set of Atlas N scale TT and roundhouse that I prepared for future installation.I find it an excellent design with only one flaw…I installed interior lighting for the roundhouse and then found out that the plastic is transparent to light.It looked terrible so I had to paint the interior also on top of extra coats to the outside.Good thing I found this before gluing the roof on…and come to think of it,maybe gluing the roof wasn’t a good idea either.
I read somewhere, not too long ago, where someone mounted an Atlas TT under a more prototypical TT pit with realistic TT. The Atlas TT had a film canister lid, open side facing up, glued to the center. The realistic TT had the film canister glued to its underside, facing down. The real TT could be snapped to the hidden Atlas TT through a hole in the layout., giving the best of both worlds, an realistic TT and Pit, driven by a very reliable mechanism. Ken
I purchased the Atlas Roundhouse not long after it came out and I finally got it painted and put together. Fit and finish is excellent. I have to believe a lot of thinking when into designing this kit since it goes together flawlessly. I initially started by painting the base where the track lays Polly Scale concrete along with the lower portion of the side walls. I airbrushed everything as I needed it. I completed the kit by using Walthers outside sidewall mount electrical lighting (933-1094) placing them where plastic exterior lights were to go. I used soda straws for conduit to run the wires up and out of the way. All the wires come together at a small electrical block in the back of the roundhouse and the wiring then goes to a old power pack, strictly used for lighting various buildings.
I decided not to go with the turntable. Instead, I used a Peco threeway turnout, which can suggest that the old turntable was removed in favor of something newer. Since I am using strictly 1st generation diesel power, it seems believable.
I used the Atlas TT on my first layout and I still have it (the TT, not the layout). The only drawback was that the stalls of my first roundhouse didn’t match the indexing and it had brass rails. But I did enjoy it very much.
If you get the TT, get the roundhouse to match it.
I recently replaced the atlas turntable I had installed with the roundhouse as it is to short. My steamers have to remain hooked up to their tender which is where I found the “to short” issue. My 4-6-0 fit but the 2-8-0 did not along with the basic look of the flat top made me want to switch. I am planning to will upgrade it as described above and use it somewhere else.
I bought the wathers 90’ turntable kit (933-3171) and motor for little more money than the Atlas with motor and got an extra 3 inches of width. I had to rework the track in the Atlas roundhouse to get the right angle coming directly off the turntable but it worked out ok. The Wathers turntable is not indexed which is a drawback so I hooked the turntable motor up to an old train transformer so I can dial the voltage down so it crawls along making it eaiser to stop in the right place.
here is some info on how to change the old atlas turntable from 30 degree indexing to 10 degree indexing . may also be useful with the new 15 degree atlas turntable
I actually model the diesel era, so all those steam engines aren’t really all that useful. before you start on prottype use of the turntable, i don’t care. i wan’t a turntable, it looks cool. Thanks to everyone for helping, it has helped a lot.
Just for reference, I put a ruler on my roundhouse and found that the inside track from the door to the backstop is about 10 inches. The apron out front is another 3 inches, but you’ve got to watch your clearance with adjacent tracks if you want to park an engine that far out.
I intentionally arranged my roundhouse so that one of the stalls is directly opposite the lead track into the turntable, so I can run a longer engine straight across and put it in the roundhouse, even if it doesn’t fit completely on the turntable. (My layout has diesels in the '60’s, which all fit nicely on the turntable.) I put an uncoupler ramp on that track, too, so I can store a dummy engine there without having to manually uncouple it and push it in.
Ernie - thanks, that was the link I was looking for. I’ve saved it for future reference.
And Alexander, you’re right. Turntables are cool, and so are roundhouses.
Don’t worry about turntables in the diesel era. There were/are still a few left. If you go to the Frisco website, www.frisco.org, you will see that this railroad still had a few turntables some 25 years after they dieselized. There are some photos of Frisco diesels, in the orange (red?) and white livery that was in use during the last days of that road before merging with the BN approaching a turntable. Besides, it is a hobby. It is your railroad. Do what is fun, and if that doesn’t exactly match the prototype, don’t worry about it.
