This thread got me curious again so I got my 394 out started to fiddle with it. Then remembered what would get it to work. Vibration from the trains running. A few years ago I had it set up on my little Christmas tree loop which is just an oval of 031 and a few straights on a piece of 3/8" plywood. Needless to say its noisy but its also what I ran trains on as kid where I remember the tower spinning.
After powering it up to 16 volts and waiting for just a minute or two I starting tapping on the platform my transformer is on and it began to spin on its own.
So if your track is on cork or homosote or the tower is up on a paper mache mountain it likely won't spin but if the layout is more typical of what we had back in the day with nothing to absorb the vibration it just might work.
Pete
