Warren Yard - 9 - Loco Services - Turntable

A simple loco turning facility is provided for both locos shedded here and for visiting locos, it represents a turntable that could be turned by pure human grunt or powered from a locomotives vacuum brake line.

My specification for this turntable required that it would be powered unattended after pressing a button to start it and rotate the loco at a realistic speed of about 1 rpm for 180 degrees and stop.

Absolutely essential was that it should as near silent as possible, I hate the typical high speed motors driving a crude gear train that drowns out everything including passing trains when it runs.

The turntable is built from the Peco kit, and developed to include many extra details visible when viewing the Yeovil Junction turntable from which the Peco kit was designed. Many images of details are available on the web, a few are referenced below in ref 9.1 and 9.2 and a video on YouTube Ref 9.3.

Above Board

Extra detail has been added based on information found e.g.

• Rods for enginemen to manually rotate the TT
• Hand cranked option with flywheel on extended platform
• Brake and mechanism selection levers
• Vacuum pipe hose and standard
• Maintenance pit with boarded covers
• Brick facing to the pit
• Weeds and staining to the pit base
• Decking modified to be rusty steel between the rails

Deck Details






Fitted to Layout




Below Board

Simply motorised in old school manner :-

• Highly geared DC motor mounted on flexible mountings eliminates baseboard transmitted noise.
• Powered from a simple mains adapter from a long defunct gadget (I never throw away adapters from scrap gadgets)
• Drives turning mechanism via a shaft with universal joints which allows the motor to float and reduces overall mechanism height.
• Turning mechanism includes a cam driven at twice the TT rotation speed so only one notch required.
• Push button to start, then held until the microswitch arm is out of the notch, the cam then keeps the microswitch arm depressed, motor powered, until it drops into the notch again, motor off. the TT only operates in one direction as it is solely for turning locos 180 degrees.
• Meccano mechanism updated to include some anti-backlash gearing to improve positioning.

Motor Mounting




Overall View of Mechanism




Closeup of Mechanism




Antibacklash Parts - Added later




Overall

Visually improved from the basic kit and runs virtually silent and certainly not heard when a train is running past, probably too quiet as I am sure the real things would rumble if nothing else. Simple and solid.

References

9.1 Yeovil Junction Railway Centre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yeovil_Railway_Centre

9.2 Turntable at Yeovil Junction
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1392981

9.3 35018 on the Turntable at Yeovil Junction - 09/07/21




Next, supporting buildings

Discussion always

Jim

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Thanks Brian.

Looks good, more of a precsion build compared with many, but I did not have enough vertical clearance for such an item, unless I put in place extra gearing to allow the motor to be mounted horizontally, as the lower deck of my folded figure of 8 mainline passed directly underneath.

Nevermind, it also let me play with part of my largish collection of Meccano I still have

Jim

 

Thanks, I think getting your head gouged might have been more of an issue, I just used a bent Meccano plate retained by caps from old EveryReady 4.5 or was it 6V batterys of decades ago to stop me scratching the backs of my hands when track cleaning on the lower deck.

Jim