ADM turntable
Entry posted by deepfat in turntable, design
2,589 views
A quick search on the internet for turntables will likely get you a list of products for spinning your vinyl collection
rather than for an accessory for your model rail layout. I mention this because looking underneath an ADM turntable you'd think it was a record player - It has a toothed belt drive and a pretty sophisticated circuit board amongst the other wizadry. Land Rover may have had a hand in its design as it looks very robust and is reassuringly heavy and it's so well built you could probably add a stylus and listen to music at say 1/2 rpm!
These things are from cheap and I have to confess what your looking at here is the fully loaded version with detailing, weathering and an adapter kit which I'll explain later. However I don't have the skills to make something as good as this and the adaptation kits for motorising turntables seem flimsy and suffer from indexing and drift.
Of course it is a thing of beauty as well and here's the one I bought earlier in lockdown..
The queen of turntables from ADM.
I'd always wanted a turntable and had planned to put one on my layout. I thought it might be good to review the design before cutting holes in my baseboard. My loft layout is resting on beams that spread the roof in my loft and the left hole is for the loft hatch and the right hole will have a removable section of scenery for access which presents interesting challenges for my layout. My initial design for including a turntable looked like this..
with three routes on to the layout and a small engine shed. However these routes weren't long enough to store rakes of coaches and this is important to me as there is no fiddle yard on this layout as it's all in view. However I do I want somewhere to form up trains to change what is running and to make the turntable a real feature as part of this. I also like the idea of a roundhouse and tried to squeeze a small one in.
After a lot of versions this is what I came up with using the SCARM software to visualise how it might work. Essentially I stole some space by shortening the branch line siding to the left of the layout and using that space to run a set of sidings between the turntable and my mainline:
With this design a loco would drive into either route A or B with six coaches and uncouple to leave the rake behind and continue to drive into the siding C. It could then reverse out to the main line on route D or reverse on to the turntable turn around and leave on route E or enter the round house. A new loco coming from the roundhouse or the mainline could cross the turntable to pull out a rake of coaches and return to the mainline with them. This looked like a good compromise so onto the installation.
I mentioned my ADM turntable came with an adapter ring. This is it can be removed from the layout without disturbing it. The turntable sits on this ring of mdf which fits in turn into a square mdf mounting plate.
All I need to do was cut the right size square in the right place in my layout and secure the base plate to fit flush with the top of the baseboard
The Wiring is easy - you get a DC transformer a cable to connect the controller to the turntable and there are two connectors to get power to the turntable and this auto reverses the power as needed. Note the DCC power goes through the circuit board so the turntable must be powered on to get DCC power to the turntable bridge.
And as you can see here I have followed the deign I had in mind..
Except that I reckon I can get a 6 bay roundhouse by using peco lifts to simulate how that would work. I can sort the details out when i have the roundhouse kit as the turntable has amazing fine grain control to get the rails to line up so I can have the entrances anywhere I want. Just as importantly when you turn it off and on again it goes through a start-up process to check it's properly aligned and I love how it simulates inertia and slows down as it comes to rest.
It's very easy top operate and I have replaced the cat5 cable with a longer one so I can have the controller next to my touch screen. My problem now is to try and get this baby working from iTrain with detection and all, but that might be a post in itself.
Finally thanks to Alistair at ADM for great aftersales service (note to self - rtfm)
Edited by deepfat
fopund the photos yopu guys lost
-
2
-
1
2 Comments
Recommended Comments
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now