Walthers 90' turntable kit: Is it really a 'dog'?


A fellow in my Club bought one and almost quit the hobby because of it. He told me the engineering is such that the gearbox can't be adjusted since everything is glued together. he eventually had to do alot of mods to it before he could make it work properly.
 
My 90' programmable turntable just died. This is the Walther Built-Up one, 933-2840. It was a great unit, and visitors were always impressed at how it went to each of the roundhouse tracks square on. Me, too.

Now Walthers is telling me "tough luck". They no longer support it. What do they expect people to do? It's not like i can just rip it out -- it is under a bunch of installed and wired track and scenery!

Has anyone else had this problem?
If so, what solution did you come up with?
 
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Well, the 90' programmable turntable, 933-2840, DID work out of the box, and really well. It was wonderful to have the presets, so that you could just push a button on the control panel (other end of the layout) and the turntable would line up with the tracks just so. It was really great, and a good crowd-pleaser.

Then the controller died, and Walthers says that they no longer support it. What is a modeler to do? :(
 
The Walther's 90' turntable model 3171 for under $50.00 is the one that will not work out of the box, not the Walther's model #2849 for $349.00.
 
I have one and it was a major pain to assemble. I have a number of Walthers kits and I will say that for the most part, their "instructions" seem more like a suggestion. Really bad. I did take my time and everything went together well, but their motor for powering the turntable was another story. It did work, but rather poorly. I ended up dumping the motor and went to a hand crank. I think this came from an old Diamond Scale turntable ??, but it works so much better.

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I was really disappointed. Here is a partial picture of another turntable I had donated to me years ago. The late Pete Ellis gave this to me years ago when he decided to expand his layout and had to tear out a town and engine facility. It is scratch build out of brass and is powered by, of all things, an old motor from a player piano. I am guessing it was built around 40 years ago. These old time modelers sure could come up with some wild ideas. They has no where as much available back then and did what they had to in order to get things done. This turntable operates like a charm.

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