True Pit - The Saga of my Atlas Turntable Conversion
Author’s Note: This was originally posted in July of 2007. It occasionally surfaces when someone adds a note or a question to the end of the thread. Thanks to all of you for all the nice things you’ve said about the thread, and all the good questions which help us all understand the project better.
For a while, I was happy with my Atlas turntable. It’s a deck, and it indexes every 15 degrees. I bought an Atlas roundhouse to go with it, and after putting the kit together, weathering it a bit and spending a lot of time detailing the interior, I was satisfied for a while. Then, I started to see other turntables, and I just wasn’t content any more. I wanted a pit turntable, but my 5x12 foot layout table just didn’t have room for one of the larger ones, and besides, I already had a turntable, motor unit and roundhouse. So, after looking at a couple of conversions that others had done on-line, I decided to tackle a pit conversion.
My layout is built on 2-inch pink foam. I took a marker pen and drew around the perimeter of the turntable, including the motor unit. Then I used a drywall saw to cut out this keyhole-shaped opening. It was fast, but it did make a mess. I took a piece of Masonite and cut it in a rectangle, a few inches bigger than the opening. I used 4 carriage bolts to hold the Masonite to the bottom of the layout, with the nuts on the bottom. If this thing ever has to come out, it will be from below, not from above, as the stall tracks will overlap the turntable’s fixed rim and keep it from being lifted out.
The one drawback of the conversions I’d seen was the rotating deck floor. The standard solution is to attach a bridge to the deck, run wires up from the old deck rails to th