Engine Terminal is Now Awaiting Scenery

Still roofless, the roundhouse awaits final track testing. The pit for the coaling station is at left center. The short tracks on this side of the turntable are for MOW equipment storage, extra wheelsets, etc.

After the last few weeks, I have been working on the new Oakdale engine terminal. It has been a bit of bear to do that since there is very restricted room to work. To top that off, all the electrical has to be accessed by ducking under the railroad. When I was building the railroad, I left the fascia off until I was finished with wiring which made it an easy job. Now, the fascia is on the work area and it is not practical to remove it so I duck under.
   

Since the locomotives to be stored here will be primarily coal burners, cinders are produced and need to be dropped and carried away, hence the depressed ash pit track. In the background, Crown Flour becomes a new industrial site with probably another one to its right.

The trackwork went down easily enough except for the ashpit area which required the benchwork to be revised to accommodate the depressed track. Similar depressed areas were made for the coaling tower's coal dump.
   

Two curved turnouts allow locomotives into the yard. The box car in the background is sitting on the main line.

The power to each track is controlled by this
panel. This will help prevent overload of the
DCC system with several sound-equipped
engines all drawing current.

One of the side projects has been the complete replacement of light bulbs over the railroad. When I first installed the lighting in 2008-9, the best bulb available was the CFL but I always thought that the light was too yellow. Your eyes adjust to it but it wasn't right. I finally found a relatively low-cast LED 100W-equivalent bulb and unscrewed and rescrewed all 75+ bulbs with these 3000°K units. The railroad looks quite a bit better. My operating crews have not seen it yet but I like it.
      The coaling tower and sand house have both been constructed as has the yard office. Now I just have to get some scenery going so I can get this area finished.

Another Turntable

With the finished turntable mounted in its pit, filler material still needs to be added in the area between the benchwork and the turntable casting. The prototype turntable was built of cast iron with its distinctive lightening holes.

Like most modelers, I have more locomotives than I really need. My choice, then, is to remove some of them from the railroad so I can operate it without stumbling over the extra motive power OR build some place to put them. My choice is to build a roundhouse in which to store all the engines I don't need but want to have anyway.

     At Oakdale, there is a space which is out of the way but is the perfect size for a small engine terminal. This area has been earmarked for such a terminal since I started building the railroad. It will allow me to have my "overflow" area and, also, to build a Model Masterpieces Colorado Midland roundhouse kit I have had for around 20 years. The first step in all of this was to locate the turntable and go from there.

     My Sellers turntable was built from a Freshwater Models kit which was out in limited edition several years ago. I had provided prototype information to the kit company and they did such a nice job on it, I had to have one. Made with a plaster pit and cast metal base, it went together rather quickly. Installing in the hole I had made was a bit more problematic. It required two people, one on top of the railroad and another beneath the benchwork to put nuts on the support bolts. My darling wife agreed to help and, as a true gentleman would, I offered her the choice of positions. Climbing underneath a built railroad and trying to start nuts with my left hand (I'm right-handed) is a bit of a challenge but, eventually, we secured the turntable and leveled it up. 

   

Lines for tracks in the roundhouse extend from the pit. The turntable is based on a 60-foot prototype which is ample for the locomotives used on the S&C.

The next job will be to assemble the eight-stall roundhouse and try to get it reasonably aligned with where I want the tracks to go. A real engine servicing area requires a coaling station, sand station, water plug and ash track as a minimum so I have to allow room for those and then assemble the appropriate structures. With the company service tracks and a new industry track I discovered, there will be four more car spots in Oakdale which should add more interest.

New Turntable at Stockton Wharf

The Stockton Wharf turntable serves two tracks plus the lead. A small figure at one end of the table acts as a reference market for alignment. The two bright metal T-nuts support the motor assembly. This entire area will eventually be scenicked as a marsh.

The turntable at Stockton Wharf is fairly far away from the view of the operator and, as such, the rails have been difficult to align. A step stool and a mirror have been the best tools so far and those are a bit crude. The best solution would have been an indexing system like that made by New York Railway Supply but I thought that was a bit pricey for just three tracks to the turntable. Finally, I have found a lower cost system which seems to solve the problem.

 

A stepper motor is supported by a piece of aluminum and two lengths of all-thread rod hung by the T-nuts in the photo above. A machined coupling connects the turntable shaft with the motor shaft. The long rod extending from the coupling is an index to zero the table's initial position with the sensor at the left of the support bar.

 Last year I found a video on the internet which showed a small system being developed by a Scottish electronics company. I followed up with the company who then produced a circuit board kit which can be programmed by the user. The product is limited in that only six positions can be programmed. This means that two positions are used just to turn an engine (one for each end of the table). It's only good for those end-of-the-line turning situations with few or no tracks. I only used four positions for the Stockton table to serve a lead and two roundhouse tracks. 

 

A simple controller handles the position. The button and knobs along the bottom
are for programming. 

A system was duly bought and assembled (it's a kit), the additional parts (motor, switches, etc.) purchased and the mechanical end designed and built. Once it is installed, it is easy to program and can be reprogrammed just as easily. The motor used is a stepper motor which means that the hardware retains the motor's position so it always returns to the same place. The nice part is that it works. My only criticism is that the table's lowest rotational speed is too fast for my taste. I've spoken to the company and they said they would lower the speed. I'm now awaiting a new board to see how that works.