Bodging

Here is the ultimate bodge!

Perfect if you want to model a turntable on your layout without cutting a hole in the baseboard for the pit.

These stills are from a video showing a locomotive being turned at San Bartholme on the Central Andean Railway in Peru.

The pit is flooded after heavy rainfall, so it could be modelled with the bridge in low relief on a reflective disc.

No need for the pit, no need for the circular rail that the bridge rides on, just a disc flat on the baseboard surface with the edges of the pit built up slightly around it.

A CD or DVD is just big enough for a short table to suitable for turning railcars and tank locos in On30.

Which would be the perfect starting place for a small terminus layout.

Placing the goods shed and station building around the turntable gives an unmistakably foreign appearance that fits in well with my On30 modelling. The shed is actually HO scale but a lick of “whitewash” over the brickwork will hide the scale anomaly and painting the tiles terracotta coloured to match the station building will knit the scene together well, the station itself is also a conversion from HO scale.

The exit (right) to fiddleyard could be a footbridge or archways through an ancient wall, maybe even just a dense stand of trees close to the track but my favourite would be a large water tank on a gantry over the front two tracks, like an extended version of the one on the Welsh Highland Railway at Rhyd Dhu.