I have done a bit of research, but can’t find a concrete answer. Is it possible to control a Circuitron Tortoise with an Atlas slide switch control box?
Long story short is that I am replacing a few straight turnouts with curved ones and need to mount Tortoises under the table. The board is too thick for an Atlas switch machine mounted under the table. I already have the wiring and slide switch control boxes in place and hope to use them for the Tortoises.
Is that possible? If so, how are they to be wired?
I don’t have knowledge of the Atlas control switch but I might have an answer for an alternative under table turnout switch machine. I had problems with distance between the Atlas #65 and the turnout. My fix was to extend the length of the throw arm. Check out my blog post. I have 6 #65s operating with extended throw arms without any problems.
IIRC (And don’t quote me) the switch has 3 terminals. The center is ground or positive depending on how your two terminal wires are hooked up. The two outside are the opposite polarity of the center. Each of the two outside terminals goes to a coil which throws the switch. The circuit completes via the center pin.
When you throw the switch and hold it down, it completes the circuit for either the left two terminals or the right two terminals. As the terminals never flip polarity, just turn on/off a single coil of 2, you can NOT use an atlas switch. (Unless you connect it to a latching DPDT relay which would defeat the purpose)
Why do you want to do this? A simple DPDT toggle will do the job. An Atlas control box is a SPDT momentary toggle. It is designed for twin-coil machines. A Tortoise is a stall motor, a constant current device.
If the whole idea is to use an Atlas control box for its appearance, form factor or whatever, using a relay might be the solution.