Turntables and things

The saga continues. It must be noted that the turntable I have part constructed is a Walthers 120' Manual Turntable. This is actually a rebadged Heljan model. Looking around the net it has somewhat of a bad reputation, especially when compared to Walthers new Built Up turntables that are dcc ready, fully indexed, whiz bang, etc. Is it just my love of building kits and attempting to scratchbuild that set me apart here? I have not completed the installation so I cannot speak about end results yet, but here is the story so far and the plan ahead.

The turntable bridge is fully constructed, from the turntable pit up at least; I have not fixed anything to the bridge that would lock it into the pit yet. Currently I have a length of micro-engineering bridge track cut to length with chamfered ends and stripped of some sleepers ready to have wires soldered on underneath. After some drilling, the turntable bridge has a small hole close to the centre to receive the track wires. I plan to electrify the turntable bridge tracks using the split ring method, as outlined by the Turntables section here. This will mean the turntable bridge track will have the correct polarity as it rotates. The Walthers/Heljan kit comes with two rings and some instructions about wiring. I am not sure how two complete rings, one for each track, allow you to wire a turntable bridge. My plan is to make one ring a split ring with some judicious hacksawing and then gap filling with styrene. Given there are two rings I guess I have two chances to get this right :-) I do not plan to motorise the turntable for a number of reasons, the first being the fuss versus the payoff for a turntable that is not out of reach. Also the lack of underspace for my shelf, the added cost and the apparent difficulty of motorising this kit. Yet for my money the kit best met my N Scale layout's needs: it fits on/in the 300mm wide shelf while being longer than my Berkshire, it looks the part (sorry Atlas, were there really turntables that looked like that?) and suited my budget.

I will need to paint the turntable well ready to receive the turntable bridge in it. Once the turntable bridge track is soldered, the sleepers have been replaced, the guide rails glued in, the track and sleepers weathered, the track affixed at a suitable height to match the approach tracks... Then comes locating said approach tracks and tracks to the roundhouse stalls, working out the wiring for same (I think each stall will end up being an independent block in my non-DCC block wired layout) and so on. Woodwork has yet to be fully completed and I certainly have not cut any large round holes in the plywood shelf yet.

Below is some bad photography of me trying out locations and so on.