I’m looking for a couple of interlocking machines to put INSIDE of a pair of towers that I’ve built. I don’t need a huge one of 100 levers; something more manageable (in the range of 10-15 levers) would be great. I know there are machines made to control the turnouts on a layout; They’re way too big to fit in, and I don’t need to control the turnouts from the tower anyways. I’ve looked at Caboose Hobbies and Walthers and neither has anything in the vein of what I’m looking for. Don’t need something super-detailed, but don’t just want a blob of pot metal, either. Can anyone here help? I’ve done a search of the forums here and found plenty on interlockings and machines, but nothing on HO scale ones.
Are you just looking for animated levers that react to the switches being thrown? (by hand or machine)
You could run a small piece of wire thru a sleve from the turnouts to the levers. The levers would then react to the action of the turnouts when you link them correctly.
Will this work?
I think we might have a nomenclature problem here. If, by machine, you mean the mechanism that prevents setting up conflicting routes, in an “Armstrong” (using levers and rods) plant it would be under the floor of the second floor and invisible. In an eletrco-pnuematic plant it would be inside the consol on the second floor and also be invisible. I think by machine you’re probably talking about the things the towerman manipulates to activate the switches and signals. In the Armstrong plant you’ll need 2 levers for every switch (or cross over) to be controlled (One for the switch and one for the facing point lock) and one for each signal. They’re lined up in a row against the wall closest to the track. The levers are about 3 1/2 feet long and would normally all be leaning towards the wall. To line a route the switch levers are reversed first, then the locking levers and finally the signal levers. In an electro pnuematic plant the machine is housed in a rectangular block structure about 3 1/2 ft high about the width of the floor and 3 or 4 ft deep. The switches/signals are activated by pistol grips ranged along the top edge of the front extending towards the towerman. You would need the same number of pistol grips as you would need levers in the Armstrong plant. Both types of plants have a track diagram along the upper part of the wall closest to the tracks.
The armstrong machine in Red Bank, NJ was laid out horizontally behind the levers on the second floor, and the row of levers was about 8 feet from the wall. It was covered by a tarp, so modelling it would be a simple affair.
I couldn’t find a pic, but maybe this is what you’re looking for:
Let’s make that a clickable link.
I used the Faller Set that Jeffrey had posted on my walthers tower. I cut it down in size and it came out nice. I made a wood floor out of plactic struct wood flooring. I would use the Faller set, it is detailed, and looks real.
Bingo! I used ‘interlocking machine’ in one search on Walthers and ‘interlocking’ as a search term in another search and neither showed anything. Didn’t think of using ‘signal tower’ as a search term. Many thanks.
If you have any pics of the old red bank nj tower, either interior or exterior I’d love to see em!
MR November, 2004 had an article ‘Model Mechanical Interlockings’ describing how to model the outside lever systems used in mechanical interlocking systems.
steemtrayn,
Thanks! Wish I had taken a bunch of pics of that tower. By the time I got around to it, it was gone.
If you are still looking for some the lever plant for an interlocking, you may want to checkout vectorcut.com/RR.htm. They have an upgrade kit for the Atlas tower that includes a lever plant. Kinda pricey if all you want is the plant, but perhaps the other pieces could be used on other projects.
Here’s the kit part. They are called Johnson bars and used in all sorts of RR applications.
Here’s a picture of the Atlas kit with the extra parts from the vectorcut kit
HTH
Dave