As part of the layout control changes currently being made to Fisherton Sarum (more of which later)  involves the turntable I thought it was about time I posted about the turntable itself. The turntable at Salisbury was originally a 65’ foot heavy over girder type. In 1958 this was replaced by a larger diameter under girder type.  An unusual feature of Salisbury shed was the the access to the stores building unloading platform was via a shunt across the turntable and I have replicated this feature on Fisherton Sarum and it often raises a comment at exhibitions.

On Fisherton Sarum I wanted to represent the original style of over girder table installed at Salisbury. I used a Peco kit for the well and the deck, modifying the deck by scratch building the heavy over girder sides and a the addition of the turner’s platform.

Thick plasticard and Plastistrut sections was used for the girder sides along with an overlay embossed with a punch to represent the rivets along the top of the sides. A small outbuilding was provided to act as a mess room for the turners employed at the shed, on Fisherton Sarum this is a modified Wills kit.

Ironically the Peco kit unmodified matches the later style at Salisbury.

Since I first built Fisherton Sarum the turntable was powered via a Frixinghall motor and gearbox that did not have any form of automatic indexing. This meant that the rotational speed of the table was not easy to control and track alignment had to be done by eye (sometimes easier than others) via a switch. This is in the process  of being changed to stepper motor and gearbox controlled via a Model Electronic Railway Group (MERG)  turntable controller kit, kindly built by Mark Riddoch, more of this in a future post.