A Midland Railway Centre Turntable for Hawick

[Ex-Pat]

I needed a 51ft turntable for Hawick so purchased the Midland Railway Centre (http://midrailcentre.com/4mm-scale-00-em-p4#anchor) 50ft turntable kit (which is supplied with sufficient rail length to cater for 51ft).

I also purchased the Motorising kit and the Installation kit. The latter comes standard as 300mm square but, as I had given up hope of the kit ever materializing, I had already built the baseboard and could only accommodate 260mm square, and this was supplied (at extra cost).

The 3 kits came in separate packages

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The Installation kit comprised MDF boards (which were 300mm square, but machined for easy cut down to 260mm square) pre-drilled for ready assembly together with the driving disc.

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Plywood strips were supplied for the well wall, together with various labelled packs showing their respective contents.

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The race rails were wrapped round the rim of the driving disc.

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The Turntable kit itself was similarly packaged and labelled.

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[Ex-Pat]

Instructions were included with each of the kits – there were however some changes in materials specifications from those shown in the instructions.

The first thing to do was to cut out the 260mm boards from the 300mm boards resulting as shown (cutting mat not supplied!). The 3 boards are separated by appropriate spacers.

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Because of my special size order I had to firstly attach the spacer pillars to the bottom board – which is shown upside-down.

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Screws were then inserted to go through the spacers into the bottom of the middle board.

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The middle and bottom boards are now attached to each other.

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The 8 pieces forming the well floor were trial-fitted (despite the image suggesting unevenness they were perfectly level as the dark colours are just colouration on the edge of the wood).

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[Ex-Pat]

PVA was used to glue in the well floor.

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The finished floor looked like this.

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A gauge is supplied to aid the drilling of holes for the pins that will support the race rails. I decided to use it together with a propelling pencil to draw a full circle indicating the track of the race rails.

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Holes were drilled to accommodate the pins for the race rails.

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Chairs had to be threaded on to the race rails – a fiddly job as some went on easily and others were really reluctant to go on. Many a search of the floor was undertaken looking for those that had just “pinged” away.

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[Ex-Pat]

The gauge has a slot in it to hold the rails in place as they are soldered to the pins.

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The chairs have to be spaced out between the pins prior to soldering.

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I used heat-sinks to avoid melting the chairs.

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The race rails are in the final stages of completion , just some of the chairs needing spacing out before super-glueing.

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With the race rails complete the top board was attached by screwing through the white nylon spacers into the middle board.

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[Ex-Pat]

All 3 boards are now attached to each other.

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and PVA is applied to the inner rim

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to secure the well wall.

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On completion attention turned to the turntable itself

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and cutting out the etched parts.

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[Ex-Pat]

The centre stretcher was attached first using the 12BA nuts & screws supplied – very fiddly, and I found the best technique was to position the screw pointing upwards and then balance the nut on top using tweezers. I very gently “teased” the nut round with a jeweller’s screwdriver until it sank on the thread and could then be fully screwed.

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The centre stretcher was followed by the 2 inner stretchers

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and the long plywood strips were cut to the width of the deck
The first strip was glued starting in the middle

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As I went along I realized that the thickness of the plywood strips was not uniform but this wouldn’t really matter at the end of the day. Spaces have to be left in four places so that the deck can eventually be attached to the main frame assembly.

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The strips at each end overlapped the curved deck ends and had to be trimmed off.

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[Ex-Pat]

The centre locating bush was soldered on

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and attention turned to the wheel-frames - my soldering isn’t the prettiest at times but they cleaned up reasonably well,

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and were partially bent up before

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fully bending and attaching (more fiddly 12BA work) to the outer stretcher and mainframes

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2 sets of wheel-frames are included in the etchings – one for the 60ft model and one for the 42/50ft models. You can see “42/50” etched into the wheel-frame so you can’t go wrong (more of this later!).

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[Ex-Pat]

Now starting to look more the part.

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I cut the rails to around 210mm (which allows for final trimming to 204mm) and started attaching the chairs to the deck rails – the same story of “pinging” away – although I was quite pleased to have only had to give up on trying to find one of them!

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The deck come pre-drilled for the pins to which the deck rails are attached and also to accept the 3 gauges that ensure correct width between the rails.

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The first pin is about to be soldered to the deck rail.

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The deck rails are now complete with the chairs having been spaced out and glued firm. (Spaces have to be left in the deck ties to enable ultimate attachment of the deck to the turntable body.)

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[Ex-Pat]

The fitting of the bracing angles to the side frames was next to be tackled – these had to be cut to length and soldered in place – I didn’t find it easy to do a good job of holding the bits together whilst soldering and keeping things neat!

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Almost finished one length.

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Scrubbed up not too badly.

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The top angle has been attached and now it’s the turn of the vertical “T” sections. For some reason I found these most difficult to solder and can’t help thinking it would have been much easier to super-glue them instead.

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Finished thank goodness!

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[Ex-Pat]

Time for the handrails to be fitted – posts soldered to the underside of the deck and wire super-glued in place.

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It was only later that I looked at my solitary photo of Hawick turntable and realised that it only has 1 handrail, so some surgery may well be performed in due course!

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The wheels – without doubt the most difficult operation of the lot!!! (Not helped by the instructions incorrectly stating that the axle bush flanges should be outwards, whereas they should be inwards.) Try as I could, there was no way that I could get the wheels to fit properly as they would only run at an obscene angle to the race rail.

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I therefore decided to try the 60ft wheel-frames supplied with the kit and my gut instinct proved to be correct - the wheel on the left is using the 60ft wheel-frame and that on the right is using the 42/50ft version. So it was a case of changing the other 3 to the 60ft version, and they all ran at an acceptable angle on the race rail.

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What I did find however was that one wheel was around 1mm above the race rail – it was necessary to do something about this as the deck rails derive their current from the 2 isolated race rails. (I think I might have induced some stress to the main framework when too vigorously cleaning up the soldering on the side frames, and that accounted for the imbalance.)
My remedy was to elongate the holes in the wheel-frame so that it dropped lower, and the wheel made contact with the race rail.

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[Ex-Pat]

I attached the builder’s plates with super-glue – just didn’t fancy the hassle of cleaning up soldering!

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The centre third of the underside of the deck was covered with Sellotape to prevent shorting before attaching it to the side frames assembly. A short wire was soldered to the 2 opposite end and side protruding deck rail pins and the stretchers to permit conductivity between the wheels and the deck rails.

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Holes for each of wires leading to the race rails were drilled and wires soldered in place.

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The deck starts to take on more character as the locking lever plates are glued in place and the first chequerplate panels are glued on top of the plastic strip insert between the rails.

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Chequerplating complete and definitely looking more the part now.

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[Ex-Pat]

Another fiddly job was building up the locking lever bracket

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and fitting it – I was quite pleased that I managed to do it so that the locking lever can be moved from one extremity to the other.

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The push bars were soldered to their pivot plates which in turn were glued to the deck – all resulting in the completed deck.

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[Ex-Pat]

On to the motorizing kit –

The motor has been attached to its mounting box and the motor pulley has been pushed on to the gearbox shaft.

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The 2 tensioner pulleys are now fitted.

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The hub has been attached to the driving disc

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by means of 4 screws on its reverse.

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The driving belt was a most enjoyable challenge and experience – it came in the form of a length of thermo-plastic “wire” which had to be cut to length and then fused together. The instructions suggested a jig be prepared, consisting of a groove in which to insert the 2 ends of the belt and with a wide saw cross-cut.

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[Ex-Pat]

A piece of nickel-silver (salvaged from the etchings) is wrapped round the bit of a soldering iron to form a blade and well heated. It is then placed in the cross-cut and the 2 ends of the belt are pressed against it until they start to melt. At this point the blade is removed and the 2 ends quickly pressed together and held together for about a minute until the weld cools.

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The resultant weld has to be trimmed to form a smooth uniform belt

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Certainly getting there now.

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The transverse beam through which the motor goes has now been fitted, (I found the motor was too tight a fit to go through one way so had to do it the other way but can’t remember now which way round it was!) this is looking down on the underside of course and you can see the 2 current feeds to/from the race rails

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Here we see the driving belt coming out of the driving disc and round the tensioner pulley and drive shaft pulley.

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So, that’s the actual kit construction finished – just got to actually install it into the layout (and that is covered in my layout thread).

There are still a few tweaks needed to get it working perfectly and of course it needs painting, but I am pleased with the outcome – wouldn’t particularly wish to do it again mind!

I do think however that the instructions could do with a few more illustrations

[carnehan]

That is incredible Ex-Pat. I had difficulty building the Peco turntable and it wasn't motorised either. This is a step above - the etched turntable version of a locomotive I should guess.

Can't wait to see it on the layout thread and painted up too.

Paul