twainloco

Greetings

Does anyone have experience with wiring the P-1 turntable kit from Sierra Railroad Miniatures? (Yes I know it's old, but so am I) My plans are a small layout with one track to the turntable and six out to the roundhouse. The turntable will be hand power with no indexing. Wiring is not my strong suit. I appreciate any help you can give.

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dwtrains

Consider the Turntable as a Reverse Loop

Wiring a turntable is for all intents and purposes the same as a reverse loop.

If using DC the easiest method is with a DPDT switch.

If DCC, use any of the various auto reverse devices from the different manufactures.

Whether using a switch or a reverse card connect that device to both power feeds (+ and - ). Then connect the out put of the device to the turntable.

I am not familiar with the particular kit, but most turntables from the older kits or scratch built would pretty much use a connection to the pit rails or through a slip ring on the support column. If using the pit rails, it is a good idea to gap them 90 degrees out from the stall and entry tracks to prevent a dead spot at when lined up to a track.

Hope this might help a little.

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Moe line

Pit Rails

Turntable pit rails can also be used as a reversing switch for the turntable. The metal wheels that contact the pit rails can be wired to the turntable bridge track to provide power for the locomotives, and with four gaps in the pit rails, on opposite sides it is possible to reverse the polarity without a short circuit. In DCC operation, it is vital that there is the small section of electrically dead rails between the insulated gaps just longer than the turntable's metal wheel spacing.

The live wired pit rails each have only one track power wire to each rail of opposite polarity. There are some who may say DCC does not truly have polarity power to the rails, but what I mean is a jumper wire from the two separate rails of the entrance track to the two separate powered pit rails inside the turntable pit. The track on the turntable bridge will reverse the polarity to match up with the entrance track on one side and the roundhouse tracks on the opposite side when wired in this manner.

For your roundhouse tracks, may I suggest a six position rotary switch, if you can find one, so that when you line up the turntable track with the selected roundhouse track, you could then turn the power on to that track with the rotary switch. The good thing about having the roundhouse tracks dead except when being used for locomotive moves, is that there's no chance of accidentally  running a locomotive out of the roundhouse into the pit, it also would effectively mute the sound effects on sound equipped models.

The other DCC quirk is sometimes a locomotive will creep without being selected by the command station, and dead roundhouse tracks eliminate that problem. With the entrance track and the roundhouse tracks on opposite sides of the turntable, they will obviously be wired in reverse from each other so that when the turntable track is lined up with those different tracks the polarity will match, but it requires a complete turn of the turntable bridge track when wired as described to match the track wiring. 

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