Kent K

Ok, then I misunderstood your problem. But that raises another question or two. Have you programmed one or two stops? I.e. one stop for track 1 and another for track 2. What happened if you select track 1? Will it align to track 1 then? And if you then select track 1 again, to get 180 degrees rotation on the bridge, will it still align to track 1? If this works, and you try the same with track 2. I.e. first select track 2, then again select track 2 for 180 degrees. Will track 2 be aligned if you do this? As you said, it seems like the bridge is out of center. But it could be that it still works if you select the track that you actually want to enter/exit? Just out of curiosity it would be nice to hear the result of such a test. BTW, have you contacted Heljan with your question? I once mailed them and they replied within a couple of days. /Kent

Hi again, what I meant was that you should do an optical inspection of all the teeth in the pit, since it sounds like there is something wrong with one of them. Either one tooth is missing or there is some unwanted stuff in between two of them. That is as I can see it almost the only way that the bridge can come out of sync. The firmware knows how many steps the stepper motor need for 360/180 degrees. So when you order a 180 degree rotation it uses this amount of steps. But if for some reason the rackrail (toothed bar) have the wrong amount of teeth then what you experience will happened. Then the stepper motor steps will not match the expected rotation. So, my best suggestion, use a magnifier and inspect all the teeth on both the bar and the motor. /Kent

Hi Pete, I don't not have any alignment problems either. To me, it sounds like there is something wrong in the rotation. Could it be that the turntable has some faults in the gearing, that makes the rotation count the number of "tooth" in a faulty way. My suggestion is that you look at all the tooth and see if anyone has been either lost or if the dip between two tooth are filled in. Cheers! /Kent

Hi again, I agree with John, the Turntable is very reliable this far. The indexing works absolutely perfect. Since I am in the phase of setting up everything, I am turning on and off the power a lot of times but that does not matter. From my understanding the turntable stores its position as soon as it has stopped and remembers it until the next time. So as long as you don't turn of the power during the rotation of the bridge, there is no need at all to calibrate the turntable. BTW. the turntable calibrates every time it rotates and one end of the bridge passes the LED in the pit. So, to me, this far the Turntable is perfect. If I should wish for an improvement that would be to have some kind of indicator, telling when it is moving. But with RR&Co it is not needed since RR&Co do the counting based on the time for one complete round of the bridge. /Kent

Hi John, I tried your suggestions, with this result: [1] gave the same result as before. I.e. block 36 locked .... [2] works, but it will not guarantee that another locomotive enters 70-2 before the locomotive enters the turntable. I think I will have to either look ahead more blocks in the conditions in [2] Or make the schedule go to the turntable. And then from the other side, schedules coming to the turntable have to reserve the complete path. I have to split up that schedule to as short as possible. Cheers!

Ooooops! I got a problem with RR&Co. When leaving the Round House, I wanted to reserve all the tracks in the schedule. I.e. on both sides of the Turntable, but RR&Co will not start the schedule. This is how I did it. I made a small schedule: Start=one track in the Round House. Via the Turntable. End on the track at the other side of the Turntable. This just worked fine, until I added the Rule: Reserve complete path to the destination. After that the schedule wont start. See attachment for error details. It seems like the schedule tries to reserve the turntable twice.... I have no clue as how to solve this. Since I want to be sure that the track on the other side of the TT is available before I start the schedule. Cheers! /Kent

Hi John, Yes now I got everything up and running. More or less the same solution as you used. This is how I did it. 1. I programmed the TT via its own controller to hit first the Main track (#1) and then all tracks leading to the RoundHouse (#2-#5). This is with the house side of the bridge towards the track. (I had to start with my Main track as #3 and continue from there. After that, I removed the 2 preprogrammed tracks (#1 & #2). This way my #3 became #1. You can from what I understand not remove or change #1 and #2 until there are 5 tracks programmed.) 2. I then continued with the other end of the bridge towards the same tracks (#6-#10) 3. After that I set up RR&Co with a Generic Turntable and 24 tracks. (Just to be able to match the layout, probably even better with more tracks, to get the timing as perfect as possible during the rotation of the bridge). 4. I then disabled/removed all tracks that did not fit my layout. Keeping the number of tracks the same amount on both the left and right view. By letting the left view have the tracks at the same "clock" as the "real" tracks, I got a very good timing when the TT rotates. The locomotive starts almost as soon as the TT stops. 5. I added 10 push buttons and set the address of these to 225, 226, 227, etc. 6. Back to the properties for the TT, now I added the 10 push buttons to the 10 tracks (5 active and 5 passive). I added each push button 2 time for both left and right rotation to the exact track (i.e. >1, <1, etc.). For each push button I changed the type to the one not toggling. (This is the bottom type. This is important since otherwise the turntable will go on forever.) 7. I added indicators to all tracks. I am using Lenz Occupancy detect LB101 and Feedback Module LR101. 8. I added stops in the RR&Co on the TT about 27 cm in from both sides. 9. For the tracks going to the Round House I added that the TT should be left in Reverse. For the Main track I added that the TT should be left in Forward direction. 10. Then for the tracks inside the Round House I added stops about 30 cm from the TT. After that I set up a couple of schedules and it works absolutely perfect. Cheers! /Kent

Hi John, I have just tried to get it working with RR & Co. and it works ok. I would have loved to get the timing to work a little better though! I have the new TT 89121 and it seems to work a little different from what the manual says. With the default decoder address 57 I get the DCC turnout address 225 for the first track. 226 for the second, 227 for the third. And the funny thing is that +/- (siding/main-line) does not do any difference. E.g. if I go to track 3 (227+) and then presses 225+ it will take me to the first track. If I then go back to the third track and instead presses 225-, then the turntable will move again to the first track. So as far as I can see, the manual for the DCC functions seems to be wrong. (Note that the manual that came with the turntable is named 89121 as it should, but the one you can download is for 89111). It would be nice if you post how you connected the RR &Co. Cheers! /Kent