Old Atlas turntable

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’m starting to pull old components from storage and found a still-in-good-condition Atlas turntable (just needed to replace the brass rails w/ NS). So I ordered the Atlas roundhouse and discovered the roundhouse has stalls every 15-deg, but my old turn table has stalls only every 30-deg.

So now I’m in the market for a new turntable. I searched through the Walthers site a little and found a 90’ Cornerstone turntable that looks kinda cool, but it’s not currently available and it’s unclear from the description how it operates. Does the motor unit sold separately index the track properly? Any other info? Maybe I should just get another Atlas.

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3171

2

A-yuh. That’s an old 30-degree Atlas all right. Looks just like the one sitting in a box under my layout somewhere, except for the color. I bought the Atlas roundhouse, too, and then upgraded to the 15-degree turntable:

I’ve converted the deck to a pit turntable by adding a bridge and sinking the whole thing into the layout:

If you have the room for a larger turntable, it’s probably worth the investment. I’ve put a lot of effort into the “pit-bash” project (and had a lot of fun doing it, too) but it’s not for everyone, and the alignment issues may yet haunt me for the rest of my life.

The Atlas roundhouse works perfectly with the Atlas turntable, but compatability with other turntables may be a problem. Some other turntables have their stalls at different angular separation, like 12 or even 10 degrees, and you’d need to fudge things a bit to get everything to line up. Also, it’s made for the 9-inch size of the Atlas, and once again you’d be doing some customizing with a larger turntable.

If you don’t mind a deck turntable (and there are prototypes for them) and your engines are short enough, then the Atlas is a perfectly functional and very reliable turntable with solid, repeatable indexing. My old one has seen 40 years, and was still in perfect running order. The motor kit is really noisy, but otherwise just fine as well.

I have a Proto 0-6-0 switcher, and it barely fits on the Atlas deck. My BLI Hudson isn’t even close. On the other hand, the Hudson won’t fit in the roundhouse, either, so other than turning, I’ve got no reason to put this engine on the bridge. If your engine roster is all short diesels, or small steam, then there’s nothing wrong with the Atlas. It will save you a lot of real e

3

So what is wrong with “stalling” it twice to move from one track to the next?

4

The 50 year old Atlas TT was a ‘toy’ designed to fit into a 18" (?) radius curve. It was noisy and too small. Best feature was simple installation (no hole to cut), and little else. I had one.

Model Tuntables and Roundhouses have come a long way.

Santa Fe’s 18th St. Chicago Passenger facility looked like the Walthers units - shop and all. Problem is they take up real estate. Avoid the temptation to have too many stalls. Less is more. I have a 10 stall Korber (before Walthers’) that requires 5.5’X5.5’(and 32"radii to curve around it). It sits on my garage wall.

FACT: Many Turntables were turned by hand, and even motorised ones were ‘crowbar’d into alignment. I’d prefer a 2nd power pack with reversing switch to develop skill, compared to the luxury of auto-Indexing’.

Best advice is to match the turntable to the selected roundhouse.

5

It’s the turntable that only indexes every 30 degrees, so you wouldn’t be able to index to one of the 3 turntable stalls at all. Also, the way the roundhouse mates with the turntable side walls, you would have to cut into the turntable wall structure to add another track.

The MSRP on a new Atlas HO turntable is $25.75, with an easily-found discounted price of $20.09. Considering the overall effort to install a turntable and roundhouse, that’s a small price to get one that will let you use all the stalls. To me, the choice isn’t whether to upgrade the turntable, it’s whether to upgrade to a new Atlas or go with a larger one by someone like Walthers.

Another selling point of the Atlas: All of the power routing, including automatic reversing, is provided in the turntable unit itself. Some turntables will require a reverser unit for automatic operation with DCC.

With a bit of effort, Atlas could come up with a pit turntable based on their deck design, and produce it for a very attractive price vs. other manufacturers. They could also make it larger to accomodate steamers, and once again I think they’d have a winner. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories here about people trying to get Heljan or old Walthers turntables to work reliably. Wouldn’t we all love an inexpensive but rock-solid 90-footer that would drop into our layouts as easily as an Atlas deck turntable?

6

Jambam, Before you scrap your old turntable, you might want to check out this web page http://pages.sbcglobal.net/sgratke/sgrr/trains/matt/index.htm . This guy has figured a way to take an atlas tt and make it index at any degree spacing he wants. At the same time you can lengthen the tt bridge and greatly improve the appearence.

At least worth a look ----

John in the hot cowpasture in Texas

7

I used my old atlas as guts to turn my TT. I have mine hooked up to an old pwer pack and can slow it down to easly line up the tracks between the index points by sight with no problem at all. This would only be a problem if a TT is located far enough from the layout edge where you can’t see it very well. Bruce

8

Thanks for the good info everyone. Think I’ll go w/ my first instinct and get another Atlas TT.

I haven’t tried it yet, but I remember the old motor drive unit being VERY loud. Are the new ones any quieter?

Thanks.

9

No, not really, or at least not enough that you’d notice the difference.