Grade crossing for DCC

Model Railroader Electronics and DCC
1

I am interested in finding a grade crossing signals for DCC. I want to manually control them using DS64s, no need for detection signaling.

Will the Walthers grade crossings work? If not, which one’s do you recommended?

I want these walthers crossings. Here.

Thanks,

Michael

2

They’ll work fine. Just be sure to protect the led’s with dropping resistors. Do the DS64s have flashing controllers?

3

Figure 3 in the current DS64 manual on the Digitrax site shows the hookup of the crossing flashers. Not sre if the Walthers ones are wired the right way to use for this. The crossing flasher function relies on the LEDs being wired back to back, it alternates the polarity of the output so first one LED is on, then the other. This can be controlled by a pushbutton or by a switch command from the throttle. You can also tie in a Tortoise motor to make the gates go up and down.

–Randy

4

So you wire the LED’s in parallel with opposite polarity?

If that’s the case most will probably not work since they typically use a single conductor shared common wire.

Does the voltage disappear totally when the switch or trigger is off?

5

Yup, anti-parallel. When you turn off the crossing, no power appears at the terminals the LED pais are connected to. When you start up the signal, it alternates the polarity (same output terminals as would be used for a Tortoise - it just alternates it back and forth at a configurable blink rate).

–Randy

6

That being the case the OP should try to get a hold of the wiring diagram for the signal he’s looking at to make sure each led has a separate pair of wires and not 3 wires which indicates a single common.

7

Thanks for the help guys. They have these at my LHS (Caboose), and I will buy a pair of these tomorrow. I sure hope they come with the wiring diagram.

What kind of resistors do I need? And how many? One for each LED?

Will these wire up to the DS64 inputs? Just like the switches? And do they also wire up to the track power?

Thanks,

Michael

8

Just the DS64. Go to the Digitrax site and look at the manual, everything is pictured.

–Randy

9

Thanks Randy, yes I already have some DS64s, and I saw the section where you configure them for crossing signals.

Now as to resistors, which kind do I need, and how do I wire those up to the crossing signal LEDs?

Michael