Home-made turntable for wooden trains¶

Tags: personal

My children like to play with a wooden train set. A common enough type of track system, we use the tracks from ikea as they’re good and cheap. We have three DVDs of Thomas the tank engine, so I’ve bought two models from that series (Thomas and Henry). Seeing how every single episode shows the turn table and the engine shed, I got loud clamors for getting them an actual turntable.

Which I then decided to make myself (with help from Rianne):

• A 100x50cm plate of plexiglass (or acrylic class), broken into two 50x50 plates.
• A couple of straight rails, screwed to the first layer of plexiglass.
• One straight rail and a big round hole through it and the first layer of plexiglass. I used some piece of plastic that they use between doorknobs and doorplates (or whatever the technical term) to connect them together. Some nut-and-bolt will do as well.
• The second plate goes underneath, fixed with some tape, to prevent the screw tops from doing damage to the floor.

They’re happy with it :-)