IVE STARTED TO BUILD THE ROUNDHOUSE. DO I NEED TO STRIP TRACK AND GLUE THE BOTTOM OF THE RAILS TO EACH SECTION. AND THEN DO YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO POWER THE RAILS? I WAS THINKING OF SOLDERING THE RAILS AT THE FURTHEST POINT FROM THE ENTRANCE DOORS. AM I GOING ABOUT THIS THE CORRECT WAY. THANK YOU FOR ANY FOLLOWUPS.
TONY
Walthers has a couple of roundhouses. I have one that has floor panels with molded in inspection pits. I’m guessing that maybe a common feature of the Walthers kits but I don’t know for sure. I have not installed it as of yet but I have given it some thought. I plan on taking a piece of flex track long enough to go from the turntable pit wall to the end of the stall in the roundhouse and remove the ties for the portion of track that will be mounted to the floor panels. The remaining ties from the stall doors to the pit wall will remain. I plan on mounting the floor section to the layout and leaving the roundhouse itself removeable for access/maintenance. I would imagine that CA adhesive or epoxy would work well to glue the rails to the floor panels . As for powering each lead, I would solder the feeders to the rails on the portion of track outside of the roundhouse, ie: the section with the ties still attached.
I probably will be starting a Walthers roundhouse for our Boothbay RR Group layout some time this winter. From the looks of the kit we have, you will need to remove some rail from the track/ties, cut to length, and glue in the grooves in the building floor. Leave some extra length sticking out the doors for connecting the track between the building anf turntable pit. I am thinking of soldering wires to the ends of the rails on the inside end, drilling a hole through the end of the groove, feeding the wire through and then through a hole in the benchwork/tabletop.
If you are running DC, make sure the polarity of the roundhouse tracks matches the polarity of the turntable bridge. With DCC it is easier; connect an auto-reverse module to the wiring feeding the turntable bridge, and the polarity matching will automatically adjust.
I built up the roundhouse to go with my Walthers turntable, the same one if you’re talking about kits 933-2900 and -2901. It’s designed for code 83 rails and you can strip the rails off flex track or buy code 83 rail by itself if your LHS stocks it. I drilled a hole in each rail slot about an inch from the back, measured after gluing in the filler pieces, and soldered a wire to each rail, fed it through the hole, and superglued the rail into the slot. If you plan to paint the floor, do that before gluing the rail in but after drilling the hole.
When you place it on the layout, you’ll also have to cut a clearance slot for he pit under each stall, if you use the pit pieces. Drill a larger hole for each wire in the layout surface and feed each wire through its own hole in the layout.