Turntable/s

available are

Well if you just want an 'Out of the box' turntable then perhaps you should think about the toy sold by Hornby....!

I once built a fully working turntable from a Airfix (now Dapol) kit, shortening it at the same time - a lot of work but I really don't see why you would call it 'Junk', any of the available (UK practise) turntable models are going to need work to make them look and work correctly.

HI Jerry,

I called it junk because that's what I thought of it. I made it as well as I have made any model and I am not too bad at building models, not great, but not too bad. The wheels would not go around regardless of how I tried to fit them, the axles looked like they were poorly moulded and the wheels would just stick, therefore making the turntable scrape along the runners and that was with no loco fitted.

I would rather have paid more and had a kit that worked well.

If you shortened yours, I assume you set up some other kind of running mechanism and runers.

Eddie.

tried to fit

I can't recall any UK based turntable, kit or otherwise, that either comes complete with either motor or manual under baseboard mechanical mechanism. Any turntable will need some work don't to it, IIRC even the Peco unit needs a lot of work to make it more than a push around model and it's been designed to be as easy to mechanise as possible.

running

I suspect that I made the centre pin and bearings (that I made and incorporated) take the weight of the turntable, the outer rail was just cosmetic - as for the outer rail, I reduced the diameter (to suit the new length) by cutting each segments length down IYSWIM, if I was to do this again I would make a new support track out of scale BH rail and chairs. BTW, I did all this some 23 years ago so can't remember all the details!...

Don't know if it's still there, but there used to be a nice description of a scratch-built turntable at:

TOS

The message from "Rob Kemp" contains these words:

Did similar, but using the motorising kit from Frizinghall Models in Bradford (see RM). Works well but noisy.

Anybody remember Bogsworth Junction? Mike Sharman's exhibition layout layout 25 or more years ago. A wonderful mixed gauge collection of ancient broad and standard gauge locomotives.

To operate his turntable he had a geared down motor, disconnected his controller from the track and on to the turntable drive, and used the that, lining up the tracks by eye. It wasn't too difficult because even at full throttle rotation was still pretty slow.

Motorised a Peco t.t. a long time ago, from memory I used a little British made motor that came with its own gearbox. This box was full of plastic gears that one could re-arrange to get various ratios. Worked o.k. for a while, then the final gear started to chew up its teeth, it was obviously transmitting too much torque. Lining up was done by eye, cannot remember how I controlled the motor, probably a separate supply through an old controller. Now have a Fleischmann one, but not suitable for British layouts. Regards, Bill.