The plan has been for the turntable to rotate between 2 fixed positions to get round the insurmountable problem of indexing it by eye. My intention was to introduce locomotives from the top right track, turn them and run them off to the center right. I also intended to have the tracks lines up from the top right to the bottom left. Doing the geometry tonight its quite obvious that this won't work out. (UPDATE; looking at the plans from 1940 and 1955 the real thing doesn't line up either. However I can't get tiny men to push the damn thing round to solve the indexing problem.)
Looking at the whole thing it suddenly became clear that the obvious option is to run locos on from the center right, and rotate the turntable 180 degrees to run the locomotives off the same way.
(Just as a recap, the operational plan is as follows. The steam/diesel loco cuts of from the southbound train and moves back to the turntable. it is turned then moves back to the servicing area. it them moves through the shed to the loco ready track where it then departs with a northbound train.)
2 comments:
I look forward to see how you solve this one as I've never managed to figure how turntables should work.
BTW I'm curious, what is the reason thet NZ railways have single-ended locomotives? I'm sure there is one, but having greown up with British and now German two-ended locomotives I've often wondered why there is such a difference in diesel locomotive design.
Thats a good question....I presume it because we went quite early on with American builders (apart from the early english ones, which did include a double ender). We are just getting our first "modern" double ended diesel with the DL's out of china.
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