I’ve been looking for a smaller turntable for one of my terminals. I was planning to use the Walthers 90’ model (the pre-assembled, not the kit), but it is no longer available. Their 130’ turntable is much too large for both the space available and is way out of character for the type of terminal.
I’ve been looking at other turntables, and it looks as if the CMR one would fit the bill. Before I spend the money . . . has anyone had experience with the CMR turntables? What problems did you face, if any?
Finally, any other ideas on a small turntable?
Before anyone suggests it . . . there’s not enough room for a wye.
CMR Turntables are GREAT! Check out my post on my CMR turntable. I built the 135’ turntable for my articulated Cab Forwards but I’m sure their smaller ones work great too.
The Walthers Cornerstone 90’ TT shows up regularly on feebay and often at decent prices.
I needed a smaller TT for my last layout and discovered the 90’ one was too long for my area. I converted a Walthers Cornerstone 130’ N scale TT. I removed the deck from the table assembly and built one using c83 flex and plastruct styrene. It made for a great HO TT about 72’ long. Maybe that would be an option for you?
I don’t know how to insert photos but if you would like to see it send me an email.
Everybody has dead hard drives. Get the proprt Torx drivers and strip one down. Save (or destroy) the shiny silver platter so rhw FBI cannot steal your infoemation, save the magnet, that is powerful and always useful. Finally you are left with a 7000 rpm 5 volt motor. Now LION will admit that 7000 rpm is a bit fast for a turntable, but this motor has the most excelent bearings built into it, it has great mounting holes both top and bottom, and could easily hide in the bottom of your turntable pit. Make a bridge, put any lenght track you want on it, and devise a mechanism to turn it.
(Not quite) instant turntable, but well worth trying if you want to try your hand at making your own.
My CMR turntable is fairly old, I bought the kit in 2000. It came with a Dayton 2L003 12 DC gear motor. The 12 volt motor will turn my turntable on less than 6 volts or very slowly. The gear motor is large and must be mounted below the pit. The 12 volt DC motor stops instantly using dynamic breaking. I operate the motor with a DPDT momentary switch and use the off contacts to short the motor upon power off. This makes positioning super accurate (less than 1/64” travel on a 18” bridge).
I have two switches on my control panel, direction DPDT and the operate DPDT momentary for operate.
I did a eBay search this morning using “Dayton 2L003 12 DC”.
I’ve been waiting for a Walthers 90 ft. DCC-friendly turntable that was supposed to land on these shores this summer. And word on whether that’s in the works yet or am I wasting my time?
The only difference between the Walthers DCC turntable and the previous Walthers built-up turntable with indexing is that you can control the rotation with your DCC throttle. Both work equally well with DCC as the track power. It seems rather awkward to dial up accessory addresses to pick which stall to line up.