Hi all,
I am thinking of installing a walther non-motorised 90’ turntable, however I was wondering if anyone could tell me, if I could still use it depsite not motorising it and using dc. Eg: would a loco be able to drive on and off using my only controller being dc, with myself manually turning the table.
Thanks, Happywarrior
You can turn it by hand, but if you power the rails using the wires and brass rings with copper wipers, you will create a reversing section in DC polarity when you turn the non-built-up DC turntable 180 degrees. You will need to wire in series a double pole double throw switch and throw the toggle prior to allowing a pickup wheel to bridge the gap off the turntable bridge.
Quite a few of us had trouble with that kit. It did not go together well, or if it did, it did not function well…one or the other. The pit on some is out of round, and the bottom bearing into which the central pivot post sits did not fit well on mine. I had to be very creative in order to get mine to work, although I also wanted to motorize mine. That brough yet more problems.
Crandell
That should be pretty easy to wire for manual operation with DC power. As Crandell notes, you’ll need a double pole, double throw switch to control the direction of the track on the turntable’s bridge. I like such a switch to also have a centre “OFF” position, as it allows you to park a loco on the turntable. I’m not sure of the set-up on the Walthers turntable, but I think power for the bridge rails is routed via split rings on the shaft upon which the table turns. Simply drop a feeder wire from each of the rails leading to the turntable, then route them to a pair of terminals on one or the other end of the switch. Add a short jumper wire to each of these same terminals, then solder the other end of the jumpers to the terminals on the other end of the switch, crossing them over to the terminals on their opposite sides (like an “X”). Next, solder a wire to each of the centre terminals, and attach their other ends to the wipers which rub on the rings on the turntable’s centre shaft.
When running a loco onto the turntable, this switch will need to be set so that the current on the turntable is the same as that on the approach track - if your wiring skills are like mine, this is sometimes trial and error (fortunately, neither of us have any decoders to fry [swg] ). Once your loco is on the turntable, use your 0-5-0 switcher to rotate the bridge 180 degrees in order to turn the loco. Since you’ll want the loco to be moving onto the turntable lead in the opposite of its original direction, flip the direction control on your throttle. This action also changes the direction of the current being fed to that DPDT switch and it will also need to be flipped in order for the loco to leave the turntable in the correct direction.
While my turntable is scratchbuilt, it works the same way, although the bridge rail current is fed through the centre shaft for one rail and through the pit rail, via wipers
Is this the same as the Heljan kit that Walthers packaged?
Some years ago I visited a layout with just about the neatest manual turntable drive I have ever seen. I wish I had a photo to post because I am not sure I can convey exactly what I saw but here goes
Below the turntable and top of the layout the central pivot was attached to a disc of wood. In sense, therefore, there were two turntables attached to each other, the modeled one up above and a simple disc down below, which might have been mounted on a sort of lazy susan thingy. The disc below was large enough that a small portion of it extended beyone the layout fascia through a neatly cut slot. Thus to turn his turntable, the modeler just manually turned the wooden disc that extended through the fascia with his thumb or finger and eyeballed where the tracks would line up.
Dave Nelson