Decking...

A decked over turntable pit is a rarity. The only "modern day" examples I can think of are the B&O Railroad Museum, and the San Francisco cable car turntables. Atlas' unique turntable is mainly a result of wanting a functional turntable for the tabletop / track-on-the-floor market where installing a pit isn't an option.

@Trainmaster

For a look at what others have done with the Atlas turntable look thru this MR thread.

Happy Holidays

Dave

There's another one...

The Lahaina, Kaanapali and Pacific Railroad has a covered turntable at their Lahaina, Maui depot:

turntable is generally a steam era relic

 Any turntable is generally a steam era relic, but with model railroading we can do whatever we want. You can say that your branch line terminal simply retained the existing facilities.

Rock Island was still using this decrepit old roundhouse and turntable at Armourdale Yard in Kansas City in 1980.

There were a few turntables

There were a few turntables in Wisconsin by early railroads which were covered to prevent snow from piling up in the pit.

Barry

Turntables are relics?

Dear MRHers,

Turntables may have been "relics", but they still come into their own in terms of fitting large numbers of loco storage/service tracks into a relatively squarish (rather than long + skinny) site...

...IIRC BNSF still running a turntable + roundhouse in the late 2000s in Balmer Yard, Seattle...

As far as Atlas "covered turntable" style is concerned, would suspect they may survive longer in snow and other increment-weather-prone locations...
(removing and filling-in/repatriating a turntable + house + servicing site is not cheap...)

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

Short Turntable Notes

Hi McKeegan,

The Atlas turntable is very short for a standard gauge prototype turntable, a bit more appropriate for narrow gauge (HO scale).

The fact that is covered (the only covered ones I am aware of had a wood cover in this fashion) suggest special circumstances in the locale.

Twenty odd years ago a BN turntable was still in use at the Portland, OR Hoyt Street yard. It is gone now. With diesel locos there are fewer reasons which demand "turning" the loco, but there are some.

'Hope this is of interest. Have fun! 

hmmm

March 31, 2002: Turnable still there, but cut off by the wye.  Looks like you can still get to it via the wye, then travel though the shop.

July 31, 2005: Turntable Removed, Lumber Yard Installed. (the turntable wasn't prototypical for the era)

August 8, 2011: Bought some more locomotives, added some more parked cars and lumber loads for the lumber yard.

September 22, 2012: Had a pipe start to leak over the layout.  Good thing it was a slow leak and only managed to damage the parking lot.  Had to redo the scenery.

March 29, 2013: Brand Spanking New Turntable!

July 11, 2016: GE Locomotive being taken for a spin.

This turntable is in the CP Alyth Yard in Calgary, Alberta.  So there is a prototype for everything.  No wood deck though

Andrew

@ Andrew - veerry eeenteresting!

Now that's quite interesting! Did they install that for the sole purpose of connecting the "runaround" tracks that bypass the shops on the right? It looks like they had been using the wye as a means to get a single loco to bypass the shops, but wanted to get rid of the wye tracks and build a bypass track closer to the shops.

Surely there must be more to it than that (spin cycle after going through the wash rack?  )

I now have three plans I am

I now have three plans I am hoping at least one works it will be santa fe style and I have lasercut the parts for it.

Atlas turntable

I read once about someone adding a bridge girder on top of the Atlas turntable, and making a pit above it, to make it look more like a regular turntable with pit, then the only non prototypical part is the pit "floor" rotates with the bridge. That would be less noticeable if smooth styrene was used to cover the planking and painted to look like concrete, it would also be possible to lengthen the bridge track length by building it that way.

"would this be prototypical

    It wouldn't be typical. Branchlines don't need multiple track roundhouses, and diesels were usually operated in  bookended  pairs in the 60's-70's so most branchlines pulled up their steam facilities including turntables to get tax breaks.Santa Fe was one of the earlier lines to dieselize so these things would likely have been gone for quite a while by the 60-70's......DaveB 

Santa Fe

When I first moved to Texas 20 years ago, I briefly worked for the BNSF railroad at the former Santa Fe terminal in Silsbee, TX and this would have been considered a branch line terminal, with most of the lines from there at 10  to 25 mph speed restrictions, some of the lines have been upgraded, but are still secondary lines. The roundhouse was gone from Silsbee in 1997, but the turntable remained at that time and was operational back then, so, yes, a turntable is prototypical for a Santa Fe branch line terminal. I just looked up Silsbee on Google earth and the turntable was still there in 2014, which was the newest Google earth image for that area.

Some times turntables are the only way

https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2684546,-76.6025972,200m/data=!3m1!1e3

Baltimore Md Marc Shops

Dan

Turntable usage

Why not look at the Atlas turntable in terms of usage?  Install it as a temporary device to fit the operational scheme, then install a replacement when time and money are available.  This worked quite well

for me, allowing full ops to start years before a better looking turntable could be installed.

FWIW, the only turntable I could find that would fit in the same area as the Atlas was a Diamond Scale narrow gauge version.  Widening the track to standard gauge is fairly easy.

Turntables

UP in Fort Worth still has a turntable and uses it every day.

Santa Fe had turntable in Fort Worth into late 70s maybe into early eighties. Fort Worth and Denver now BNSF had a working turntable in Fort Worth into mid 60s. The Santa Fe turntable was moved to north Fort Worth and is operational in the old stockyard district for Grapevine steam trains.

So you can do what you what you want to do for your time period it will be prototypical. Besides it is your railroad do what you want and have fun.

All of the turntables in Fort Worth were and are a pit type, but the atlas can be made into a pit pretty easily.

Don

Stand in

Ditto.  I had 2 Atlas Turntables on my previous layout and will have at least 2 on the current layout.  I hand lay my track so I have left the last 8" or so into the turntable as flextrack so when it does come time that I install a more detailed turntable, I can easily adjust the approaches to the new turntable.

Just like Don, until I get to that point, I will be able to use a turntable and procede with operations.

using them for a base

A few very good local layouts used the Atlas table for the base of their 'real' turntable. They put the Atlas table under the benchwork, connected a scratchbuilt bridge using the electrical connections from the Atlas table and used it for the connections and the gears. One removed the gearing that stopped it every few feet. I was going to do exactly that before I found the Peco turntables in On30...