I just “dry” fitted the Walthers builtup 90’ turntable into my layout. The programming and positioning work fine. I am disappointed, though, in a couple of things. One of the bridge tracks is a little offset, and the gaps are uneven on the bridge ends. The offset rail seems a little low at one end, cause the meeting external code 83 track rail is a little high. The bridge does seem to be sitting stable. I can work and live with the rail thing, but the color scheme is something else. The wood grained textured planks on the bridge are a medium green color. The pit is another shade of light greenish/gray with weathering sprays of what looks like a rust color. It does not look like concrete or anything else that I am familiar with.
First question is prototypical. Was it common for turntables in the 50s to be painted, even the concrete pit? If so, then the color could be acceptable, I guess. I just don’t care for it.
Second question: does painting (thin coat airbrushing) the rail and gear run in the pit detrimental to operation?
Question 1. Railroads were pretty stingy, they painted things that needed the weather protection, like rolling stock and turntable bridges. They didn’t bother to paint things that could stand up to the weather, like concrete. I would expect a concrete turntable pit to be natural concrete color, with an overlay of grease and oil from the locomotives and the pit bearings. Plus some windblown trash, leaves, a few weeds. And if it was low lying and got flooded, some mud.
Question 2. Remove the bridge and you can paint the pit rail anything you like. If the bridge picks up power from the pit rail be real diligent about getting the paint off the rail head.
Have you done that successfully? I believe that one should stay away from the rail and its track. It is sensitive to foreign materials that could interfere with the tracking of the bridge.
We did paint both the pit, and the pit rail on the big turntable down at the club. We sprayed the pit in concrete color, and then brush painted the pit rail with rail brown. Worked fine. Two things to keep in mind. Our turntable did not pick up juice thru the pit rail. It used a fancy NY Railway Co. stepper motor drive that handled bridge polarity automatically. And, the bridge rotated on a nice strong center bearing that took care of bridge alignment. The pit rail was just for show. We had wheels on the ends of the bridge that rolled along the pit rail and looked pretty good, but they didn’t have anything to do with alignment or electrical pickup.
I masked off the bridge rail and gear track, and doing the rest of the pit in the concrete scheme first. Then I plan to mask off the finished concrete around the rail/track, and lightly spray the bridge rail and track rail brown, or maybe just steel. That procedure should minimize the paint build up on the rail and gear track. I will keep it thin and even. Hoping for the best.
BTW, when I did the first 180 command, the bridge rail height was a different story with the other end of the bridge - too high. I felt there just had to be something wrong. On closer inspection of the bridge, I found a wheel bearing assembly was not seated all the way, causing the axle and wheel to go up at an angle. Snapped the bearing piece back in, and everything is much closer, as far as rail height, on both ends. The same person must have put in the rails, because of the offset rail that is causing uneven gaps. It appears pretty solidly mounted, and I couldn’t figure a way to slide it even with the other rail. It’s not that bad. Just trimmed the long end a hair, cause it was way too close to the pit edge. I can hear a click when train wheels go over the gaps, but no noticebale/dangerous bumping. So far, the indexing/positioning has been flawless.
I can see this thing is going to be hours of fun. Can’t wait to turn around my COLA with it. Got a couple of switchers to help at both ends. It will be one car at a time, will take awhile, but will provide a railroad task to do besides switching/moving freight. Oh! My Genisis F3 AB set just fits on the bridge, all hooked up. Didn’t expect that. Bonus!
Personally, I’m NOT a fan of the latest version of the Walthers Built-up turntable.
The programming is for the birds, you have no idea which way the table will turn. They state that the control cab is, in effect, the ‘A’ end and if you want to table to rotate to a track, you address that track in relation to the ‘A’ end. That doesn’t always work.
The first version of the table control was far superior. You selected which direction the table turned and released the “Go” button just before the table reached the track you wanted. Now, with this pre-programmable stops, it’s hit or miss if the table will even go to the track you selected.
One more “bitch”, it’s DCC ready. Big deal. Who runs switches and turntable and accessories from a throttle. Real engineers do not do that so why should modellers? Besides, if it’s “DCC Ready” then why does the sound cut out half way around the pit? Becuase it’s set up for DC and polarity reversal, that’s why. You do not need polarity reversal with DCC.
Here is a snap shot of my 130 foot Walthers installed. I noticed from the local turntable at the Westcoast Railway Heritage Park and photos from Railpictures.net that lots of gravel, ballast and debris falls into the pits and even veg grows…so I copied it…but be sure to glue it all down firmly…you don\t want any stray ballast on the pit rail. It may look haphazard in my photo but nothing moves whatsoever in the pit.
Also, the bridge rails can be pushed backward and forward to align them easily, like flex track. At least mine did…which were also not aligned when out of the box.
The bridge rails on my Walthers 90’ would not budge. I wouldn’t think you would want them to move. They might move on their own again. Anyway, it’s no problem. Everything worked great on the dry fit with 2 tracks temporarily layed into it. It’ll be even smoother with final install. Got it removed for painting/detailing now. Yeah, I love it already. Thanks for the tips and blessing.
I have one of the original Walthers built up 90’ turntables, and have been using it for years. I did find that the fixed “gear” in the pit that the turntable drives on is very sensitive to any little bits of forign matter like a small piece of ballast. Do be very careful when painting the pit not to overdue anything on that part. For the sake of operation and not wanting to goof up an expensive piece of equipment I left the pit rail and gear umpainted.
I vacuum out the pit, especially the drive gear frequently, and my layout environment is not dusty at all.
I think that’s the biggest thing with turntables, if you paint the pit… or really do anything in the pit such as weathering just make absolutely sure the hole the turntable fits down into is taped over, sealed good. And if you’re going to paint the ‘guide rail’ part that the ends of the TT rides on in the pit keep it THIN.
It would be hard for me to get along without a turntable. [:D]
Sorry that it took so long for me to get back to this. Got some more detailing to do, especially on the bridge, but the pit is basically done. I painted the rail and gear track using a combination of enamels: steel, semi-gloss black and light brown. I was concerned that water based acrylics might not stick to that very smooth/shiny rail or to the track, start to wear/chip down the road, and I didn’t want to thicken the paint job anymore by applying a primer and a clear coat, too. After a good cleaning, the rail was first lightly sprayed with the steel. Then a light spray of a black/brown mix (more black than brown). I originally tried to spray the gear track with the cement color, but quickly realized that the coat would be too thick and uneven to get down into the valleys of the track. So, I cleaned the small area off, and very lightly shot the track with the black/brown mix - just enough to lessen that factory puke-green color some. It looked too weird with the lightly sprayed concrete on the green track, IMO. Everything aligns and works has before, no problems. In fact, the bridge seems to vibrate less with heavier loads, but maybe that’s cause it’s breaking in.
