Garden Railway Forum

Hello everyone,
Since my railway is due to an upgrade soon, in which the station will be changed to an endstation, I thought that the end of the station spurs could be connected with a segmentswitch or turntable. This saves a lot of length, and gives me the oppurtunity to service the locomotives before and after a run from the easiest side.

The turntable is made from junk out of the metalbin, the base is the backplane of a selfretracting firehose, where the big spring used to be in. The axle and bearing come from a vibratormotor and the rest are bits and pieces of stainless steel cut-offs.

The bearing is a big self centering bearing and I hope it will be able to handle offset forces when a locomotive rolls onto the bridge so that I won't need a rail in the floor of the turntable, but if so, it can be added later on.









Detail is a bit on the hefty side, but seen the use and situation it will be in (cats running around, dogs chasing them and grandsons wanting to play trains as well) I guess it is a bit of both worlds. It's not as simple as a flowerpot turntable and not as highly detailled as a scalemodel. I do need to drill a few holes in the base to let rainwater out obviously, otherwise it's going to be a small pond with a bridge in it...

What an interesting project and great use of materials.

Ian

Once in position Daan the scale won't be an issue outside in the garden.

Nice engineering there Daan! Not dis-similar to the one Rik saw on the DHR!

The only thing it has in common with Riks turntable is that it's round.

The darjeling turntable looks much better with the double rails on the base, but is also much larger. The parts in the metalbin where fitting so nicely together this way, that I just went for the easiest and best working option.

Neat looking job, Daan. I like the look of that bearing. Wish I had bits and bobs like that in my bits boxes.

Rik

Very robust looking. Are there drain holes?

There will be drain holes. There is in fact one just below the bearing, the big axle in the middle has a slot should water get in the bearing. In every quarter there has to be a drain added when the turntable is placed in it's position..

Tidy work, I would have thought that bearing would be strong enough to take a loco without any give. Plus the circle isn't overly large so there shouldn't be too much stress.

Thanks, I'm not nervous about the forces on the bearing, but normally these are used in pairs, locking themselves in position. This one is missing it's counterpart and relies on gravitation to stay in place. Therefore, when a locomotive rolls onto the bridge, it could move the bridge down, because of the self levelling characteristic of the bearing. The load is nothing for that bearing, it has been used in a vibratormotor of 4kW with 50kg offset weights..

Anyway, if so, I'll make a small block under the bridge in that position to prevent the bridge falling down too far. I've tried a few things and it should work fine later on..

Very nice build Daan.

Hope you put some grease of some sort on the bearing, so any moisture won’t in time rust them…