Turntable without a roundhouse?

I don't have one on my layout, but there is a prototypical one in the BNSF yard in Belen, NM.

It feeds a maintenance facility/pit

You can check it out on google maps satellite view.

Don't have any photos of a model but here's a real turntable without a roundhouse at the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum. 

You are correct.  RHs take up a lot of real estate!  My layout has five TTs but only two of them have a single stall engine house.   I only need TTs to spin engines at the end of each branch line, not for modeling prototypical purposes.

However, to best model a full service steam facility it would be best to some how include some form of a RH.

John Armstrong has a book setting out various ways you can compress the facilities by adjusting the degrees of separation, length of approach tracks and frogs at the TT.

If you flip the RH 180 degrees to be alongside the approach tracks the length can be reduced.

Some samples w/o RH on my layout:

Below view in staging room.

I recently added storage tracks by fashioning an finger arc add on:

Are there not any storage tracks?  The round house does not need to be directly across from the lead track.  

Both Lionel and MTH make single and multi-engine sheds that are narrow and may work on your whisker tracks. I have two of the Lionel hopper sheds (6-37913) placed end to end on a siding which look good, to me anyway.

In Iberia, LA, the MoPac had a TT and a 2-stall roundhouse--yes, the stalls were angled, two very small slices of a pie ;-).

Thanks a lot for all the great help! I am doing some more measuring but I think if I flip it 180 and put it along the approach tracks that will do the trick!  I also may have an area for a staging room. And I am going to check out the multi engine sheds too I was only looking at the Atlas roundhouse but other options may work.  Thanks all!   Roger 

You don't need an engine house or roundhouse with a TT.     There were many prototype facilities at the end of branches or on shortlines that had TTs in steam days, but not buildings for service.    There are also many shortline and branchline facilities that had 1 or 2 stall engine houses in stead of TTs.     

From a prototype perspective, TTs take up less space than a wye, although more expensive to buy and maintain.   A TT lets you get a lot more parking places with fewer switches.    But in steam days, it was very inconvenient to run a steamer backwards for long distances.    The speed had to be reduced and the visibility issues were there.    Also the coal dust from the tender blew into the cab - -   So even many small roads would put in TTs to allow turning.     Once GP diesels became common, TTs faded away and are pretty much gone.    A shortline with a GP7 or 9 had no big reason to turn it, even though the controls might be a little inconvenient.   

Just don't name the town Altoona, or Conway, or Enola!

A final note, someone did an article where they put the roundhouse and TTnext to a wall.     They only had 2 usable stalls I think but the facade of the roundhouse wrapped around against the wall and there were dummy stalls along that part, some with tenders only.    

Both the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville RR and the Lowville & Beaver River RR had turntables (armstrong variety) without roundhouses in Broadalbin and Lowville  respectively

I had room for the turntable but not the roundhouse, So I built the roundhouse foundation, minus the back.  I did that to show where the roundhouse was. The roundhouse was removed to make way for the new main tracks.

I've kicked this idea around a couple of times. This is the TT/roundhouse at Neuenmarkt Museum in Germany. It's interesting because it's a partial arc of travel, not a full turntable  -  space-saving by the prototype which was probably squeezed for real estate, just like we are.

An extra spacesaver might be cutting off the back of the roundhouse and only using the outside stalls, leaving dummy locomotive fronts poking out of the doors. This has been done in HO scale by Bob Boudreau - https://sites.google.com/site/...thernrr/home/modules

The Southern Pacific Railroad had a 20 or so mile branch line which went from Ventura, California to Ojai, California.  At the track termination point in Ojai there was a turntable.  There were no locomotive servicing facilities nor buildings but it served only to reverse the locomotive.  The branch line tracks were removed decades ago (now a bike path) but the concrete turntable pit remains. 

I have an Atlas turntable on one end of my 4'x12' layout but no roundhouse. I have room for three spurs, each ends with a lighted PW bumper and the longest can hold a #736 Berk. I'm happy with it.

Here's mine with a single stall shed:

This side of  the layout is 36" wide with the TT at one end of the yard.

I've found the shed is of no use to me and may remove it in the future.

Firewood posted:

I've kicked this idea around a couple of times. This is the TT/roundhouse at Neuenmarkt Museum in Germany. It's interesting because it's a partial arc of travel, not a full turntable  -  space-saving by the prototype which was probably squeezed for real estate, just like we are.

An extra spacesaver might be cutting off the back of the roundhouse and only using the outside stalls, leaving dummy locomotive fronts poking out of the doors. This has been done in HO scale by Bob Boudreau - https://sites.google.com/site/...thernrr/home/modules

Leave it to the Germans to come up with a fascinating bit of engineering. The pivot point is offset (by a lot!) from the center of the turntable bridge. 

Lots of options for this. You could have a painting/photo of the roundhouse on a backdrop using a photo printer and Photoshop to create the backdrop. Or, you could just model the front of the Roundhouse in front of a backdrop. 

I use double stall engine sheds with some staging tracks. That way the turntable and engine facilities don't need to be right next to each other.

George

Bob Delbridge posted:

Here's mine with a single stall shed:

This side of  the layout is 36" wide with the TT at one end of the yard.

I've found the shed is of no use to me and may remove it in the future.

More layout pics please?

Here's my Bowser 24" turntable that I have been including on my last 4 layouts without a roundhouse. It works well for me particularly now in my compact space:

This is a typical end-of-line TT on a Canadian National branch. The layout is S scale based on the real Port Rowan on Lake Erie. 

http://themodelrailwayshow.com/cn1950s/?p=1101