I have a large downtown passenger station with 10 tracks, that feed off the two legs of a wye. In other words, a single track leads into the station and split off into 10 passenger tracks via the wye, five tracks per leg.
Looking from the wye on the left to the station on the right, these 10 tracks are reached through a series of 8 turnouts, 4 right hand on the upper portion and 4 left hand on the lower portion.
The turnouts are powered by Tortoises which are controlled by DPDT switches.
This arrangement works fine, but it requires a lot of manual flips of the DPDT switches to route trains correctly onto the right passenger station track.
I would like to automate the station track complex so that I can more easily route trains through some automated system.
Ideally, I could throw one switch or press one button and have the routing take place automatically.
What type of circuitry is available to accomplish this task?
Incidentally, my layout is DCC-powered, using an NCE PH-Pro 5 amp wireless system.
Your situation sounds like a really good fit for an NCE Mini Panel board and Switch 8 turnout decoder.
You would connect the turnouts to the Switch 8 decoder and program it, then connect a pushbutton for each station track to the Mini Panel and program it.
Once you have programmed the Mini Panel, you should be able to line a route by simply pressing the button corresponding to the track you want the train to end up on or depart from.
If I read your description correctly, trains to/from five of the tracks (let’s say tracks 1-5) will only go in or out via one leg of the the wye, and trains to/from the other five tracks (let’s say 6-10) will only go in or out via the other, so this would make this relatively simple to set up.
If trains could go from any station track (1-10) to/from either leg of the wye, it would be a little more complicated, but not impossible, to set up.
Fritz, thanks for that information. I had researched the Switch 8 decoder a little bit, but I was not familiar with the Mini Panel. That sounds like a perfect setup, so I will look into the Mini Panel further.
Yes, you did read my description correctly, trains to/from five of the tracks (tracks 1-5) will only go in or out via one leg of the the wye, and trains to/from the other five tracks (tracks 6-10) will only go in or out via the other leg.
there’s a passenger station and coach yard on the Pacific Southern. There’s a panel for this section of the layout with push button switches for mainline, station and coach yard tracks. pressing two buttons aligns all the switches between the two points
There are a couple ways to do it with a diode matrix. You can set it up to have a rotary switch and as you dial in a track it automatically lines the Tortises.
Or you can use the matrix with a push button for each track.
Our hosts here at MR ran an article a few years back on “cascading” Tortoises to set up routes. I can’t recall when this was, but if you are a subscriber you can probably search for it. I’m guessing it was about 5 years ago or thereabouts. The general idea was to use the secondary contacts of the Tortoise to trigger another, but there were fine points concerning voltage drops and so on. When you search for it, if you do, I’d use the term(s) “cascade” or “cascading Tortoises”. Sorry I can’t remember more…
LION does not do DCC. Him thinks they are for FROGS or some such animal.
LION uses DC and has TORTOISES to move the switch points, but him can route the yard with the use of a single lever. With no lever pulled the train stays on the main line, call it track 0.
Pulling any lever will move the lead switch from track 0 to the yard alignments.The default movement would be to the number 6 track.
Pulling the first lever moves both the lead switch and the switch for track 1.
Pulling only the second lever moves both the lead switch (switch 1 remains in the default position) the train goes to track 2
Pulling only the third lever moves both the lead switch and switch 3 (switch 1 and 2 remain in the default position) the train goes to track 3.
I give [tup][tup] to the NCE Switch-8 solution. Implemented through macros, all you have to do is remember the different routes. I’ve used this for my staging yard for 4 years now with virtually zero issues. It’s very easy to program, another advantage.
Adding the mini panel means not even having to remember routes. And not having to switch the throttle into macro mode or anything, just press the button on the panel for the desired route.
That’s a good tip and may help avoid having to add an extra Switch-8 or other device if you have more than 8 Tortoises to control, depending on the specific track design used.
Randy,
I’ve got no experience with the mini-panels. That would probably work well with controlling a station in the layout room, because they could be physically placed in proximity to the track they’re controlling.
For staging, I like having the Macro controls available on the hand-held controller. My staging yard is in another room from the layout and I move back and forth between it and the layout. My guess is you can use multiple mini-panels, so one could drive my staging directly and another act as a remote? That might work for me, but would not be as flexible for the way I have things set up as the macro-on-controller method is.
This is great input everyone, and I very much appreciate it.
While the diode matrix seems interesting and, undoubtedly, less expensive, I am going to pursue the Switch It / Mini Panel approach.
I actually have 9 turnouts to automate. Eight of them feed the 10-track ladder in the yard and the ninth is the wye. So, I may need to add a Switch It to the Switch 8 setup.
If the Switch-8 outputs go to two motors, I wonder if I could get away with just the Switch 8 without having to add a Switch It to control the wye turnout. Could each of the eight Switch-8 outputs connect to both the Tortoise controlling the respective station turnout as well as to the Tortoise controlling the wye turnout?
It seems like one of those things that will only work in certain circumstances. The most obvious one to me would be where you have a crossover between two parallel tracks. Both turnouts are thrown at once, as they would never be out of sync in actual use, either one way or the other.
So a definite maybe, depending…[;)]
It might be a case where putting the wye track on a Switch-it is the easier approach.
Any situation where two turnouts will always be moved at the same time should be OK, since the load of two Tortoises doesn’t exceed the capability of a Switch-8 driver. I run four crossovers this way.
Amazing that he solid state solution is not one penny less expensive than the simple analog one. Does the Switch 8 have any extra “outputs” for signaling?
Can an additonal Mini Panel be added as a redundant control in another location?
Rich, If the solid state solution does not cost less, or work better, or offer more features, then what is its advantage? Other than actually being more complex?
Also, if one relay in my approach quits working, highly unlikely actually, the repair cost is $5. If the Switch 8 or the Mini panel quits…