The last time I had a working turntable was on my first layout, the Fiddletown Southern, when I was in middle school in the late 1960s -- an Atlas 9 inch turntable. A couple of my larger H.O. layouts -- the first Palo Verde & Pacific in my parents' attic in the 1970s, and the second in my garage in the late 80s -- were supposed to have, but I never got around to adding them.
I've included a turntable on several of my designs for the Lockwood & San Emigdio; I want to have some engine storage so I can keep several of my locomotives on the layout. Ideally, I figured I'd use one from Kitwood Hill, which by all accounts makes fantastic kits. But they're pricey, and have to be ordered from the manufacturer in England.
Well, one of them turned up on eBay a little over a year ago, at a very reasonable starting price, from a modeler here in California. I bid on it -- a lowball bid at first, then a more serious bid that was close to what I'd pay for a new one. I ended up winning the bid for a very satisfactory price; with shipping, I probably paid about half what it would have cost to order one from England and have it shipped.
The kit looks amazingly well engineered, and I've been looking forward to building it, but not having a layout large enough to install it, I've had the kit sitting on a shelf ever since. When I started working on the new layout, I did order the motor I needed for it, from Amazon. Now that I've got a place for it. I'm going to start putting it together.
I started this morning by staining the parts. I may start assembly as soon as tonight.
7/7/25: I started assembly today, gluing together the center pivot structure and the rings that make up the pit floor. After letting that dry, in the evening I added the ties for the ring rail, then soldered the rail in place.
I added the side supports, the top rim, and some of the side panels. At that point I decided to paint the pit bottom tan. It would have been easier to do this before starting to build the sides. After letting that dry overnight, I'll paint the rail and ties; that definitely would have been easier before adding the sides.
7/9/25: Yesterday, I painted the ring rail and ties, finished installing the side walls, and installed the power pickups.
Today, I cut the hole for the pit in the sheet of plywood I'm going to use. Then I built the motor mount and did most of the assembly on the bridge.
Both the 2-6-0 and the outside frame 4-4-0 just fit.
7/11/25: It's not real obvious from the picture, but I made a fair amount of progress today. First, I framed the plywood panel on which the turntable is mounted. Then I installed track on the turntable, which turned out to be pretty easy thanks to an included set of jigs.
I also put in the decking, before checking the instructions, which say to do this after building the gallows. I don't think it will be too much of a problem.
I had to shim the turntable pit 1/8 of an inch, because I'm laying my track on cork roadbed. Then I put in cork roadbed for the first couple of tracks, and spiked a short piece of track in place just to test it. From what I can tell at this point, I think it's going to work fine.
This evening, I built the gallows.
The last major step in the build is adding NBW's. The kit includes do-it-yourself NBW's assembled from laser cut nuts and washers and wire for the bolts. I might instead buy NBW castings from Tichy or Grandt. Then I can do final installation, lay track, and hook up electrical and see how this thing really works.
7/13/25: Further progress.
7/15/25: Pretty much done. The approach track is laid and working. Two of the four storage tracks are laid but not yet wired. I ran out of cork roadbed so I either need to scrounge another yard, or use some salvaged Homabed from the old HO layout, which unfortunately is not quite the same thickness as the cork.
The turntable motor is connected to a DPDT momentary contact switch and is working. I wired the rail feed to a reversing switch, but either the switch or the wiring is bad, because it works thrown one way but not the other. Sorting that out will be job one tomorrow.
7/16/25: I replaced the reversing switch with another one and mounted both the reversing switch and the rotation control switch on the fascia. That's all working as it should. I also glued down storage track 3, and wired up all three storage tracks. I've been test running it all, and everything is working surprisingly well.
The plan is to add one more storage track on the right, and a short one on the left; the track on the left will be the fuel supply track. However, I'm down to one full length of track and a few short scraps. If I decide to replace the section of HO track, that will take up the full piece, leaving me with probably not enough to do both tracks. I guess I could hand lay on or both, if it came to that.
I also plan to add switches to turn off power to the storage tracks, which will simplify matters if I decide to run a DC engine from time to time. For now, the tracks are connect directly to the main power bus.
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