At Midwest Railway Preservation Society in Cleveland we are restoring the turntable brake for operation and we need some photos or a plan for how the brake parts fit together. The turntable was made by Nichols Engineering of Chicago and we have most of the parts for the brake mechanism but we need to be able to connect the top and bottom set of brake shoes together with a linkage that we do not have. If anyone has photos or a plan for this please reply. The turntable is vital to our operation and we move it using heavy equipment and we hope to rewire the new motor soon.

It looks like the turntable at Danbury is similar to our Nichols here in Cleveland, does anyone have any info about the table at Danbury?

If the Danbury turntable (or some other similar turntable) does not provide any useful information, a couple other approaches I've been involved with might be useful.

In our (IllinoisRM Steam Department) previous searches for a suitable turntable, we found a potentially available turntable, and began negotiations (which later failed). In the process, we determined that some related blueprints were available in the installing-railroad's corporate archives. A couple of department members visited the University which held those archives, and were able to obtain copies of the related blueprint sheets for the cost of travel, plus $75 for copying and shipping. Within a few weeks, we had the prints in-hand. This sort of investigation might possibly be fruitful for your group.

In the past, we also have occasionally been able to find related patents and use the patent drawings to infer the approximiate shape of missing parts. We could then scale from the drawings, as well as parts we have, to make an informed guess of appropriate dimensions for the missing parts. A little trial-and-error helped us create the suitable replacement parts.

With that in mind, I tried a few quick google searches of various combinations of "Nichols", "turntable", "brake", and "railroad". My simple searches did reveal any relevant patents. Perhaps you can find some patent numbers or patent dates or patent years which might help refine the patent search criteria.

I hope that these ideas will be of help.

Regards,
Bob Milhaupt
Occasional Steam Department volunteer,
Illinois Railway Museum

Thanks Bob, i also tried a quick patent search with no result. I was able to contact Danbury and they are checking for us right now. If anyone else knows of a Nichols turntable that still exists please let us know. The Danbury table was installed in 1911 and ours was installed around 1907.

I don't know which railroad originally built your roundhouse and turntable, but there may be an affinity group, like the PRRT&HS, which may have drawings in their files. Have you tried that? Do I recall that you folks fairly recently acquired this facility? If so, the former owners may still have materials on file regarding the turntable.

Were you ever able to locate what you were looking for? We have a Nichols Engineering transfer table which I am currently trying to locate drawings.

I have some information on a Transfer table made by the Geo Nichols Co out of Chicago if that would help on the brake. If it is the same company they probably used they type of brake. Let me know and I will try and get pictures the next time I at the Transfer Table.
It is a Transfer table NOT turn table.