Our club has been using Tortoise switch machines on a HO scale yard. There are 2 pair (3 tracks) of Tortoises that switch the electricity between seperate power packs. We have been using the 2 internal sets of Tortoise contacts to switch the positive rail and to energize the frog. The negative rails have been wired in common. We now want to seperate the common rails with another set of contacts to be able to switch the negative rails between the power packs.
Is there a switch activator that has 3 set of contacts? Would it be better to attach the rails to the Tortoise contacts and get a seperate relay for the frogs?
You can get multi-pole relays, that’s what we used to switch power supplies on the old club I belonged to. Toggle on fascia for cab A or B, relays we used had 4 poles, 2 were for the 2 wires from each cab, another set drove the indicators, I think the 4th set were unused at the time.
Or, people glue microswitches to Tortoises all the time, glued on so the moving piece presses the lever at the end of the throw, that will get you 2 more sets of contacts.
I’ve used similar to the above P&B relays for 40+ years without any failures. Sockets are readily available for that style relay in several varieties from chassis mount, angle brackets to DIN rail mounts.
We are doing that exact same thing on our modular setup. We chose to run the grounds through another Tortoise( mainly because we had a bunch of tortoise). tried the first setup last night and it worked fine. micro switches are a good way to go also.
Yes, it is called a relay. and you can add as many of them as you knead.
LION uses 12v 4PDT relays all over the place.
The problem as you will have discovered is that the Tortise is always on, and then so is the relay attached to it. But the solution is simple, just add a rectifier before the relay, and if you orient it correctly it will only pull the relay when the points are reversed.
I was hoping to find some good ideas without using another Tortoise.