We have a few Peco turnouts on our club layout. These switches are located a couple of feet in from the edge and its not practical use Caboose ground throws. The rest of the turnouts (non Peco) we control with a simple rod running from the facia to a slide switch mounted under the turnout with piano wire up thru the throw tie of the turnout. This arrangement does not work with Peco since they have the positive spring tension. Any ideas?
RedGrey
Why mess w/ an extra throw. Almost all of my switches that are within reach of the aisle (somewhere in the nieghborhood of 100, but I’m not going to go out and count them)are Peco. I just shove the spring housing to its greatest tension, crimp it to hold it in place, and use the throwbar or points to line the switch. The ability to do this w/o any extra mechanism was a big selling point with me.
remove the spring
http://www.loystoys.com/peco/pl10w.html
http://aglasshalffull.org/article-l-frog-switching-2.html
Why mess w/ an extra throw. Almost all of my switches that are within reach of the aisle (somewhere in the nieghborhood of 100, but I’m not going to go out and count them)are Peco. I just shove the spring housing to its greatest tension, crimp it to hold it in place, and use the throwbar or points to line the switch. The ability to do this w/o any extra mechanism was a big selling point with me.
It’s occured to me that “a couple of feet” might be regarded as beyond comfortable reach. If so my solution is a piece of ABS 1/2" pipe w/ a slot cut in one end into which is glued piece of .040 styrene. It makes a kind of tee shaped wand w/ a really short cross and a really long stem. I put two right angle hooks into the layout edge to hold it and when it comes time to throw a switch that’s beyond easy reach I pick up the wand and away we go.
You don’t even need to do that. Take the plastic spring cover on top of the ties and slide it parallel to the rails. This will pretty much deactivate the spring action. And you can switch it back to re-activate, too.
Thanks for the replies. Yes, the switches in question are just out of comfortable reach. We’d prefer not to use a wand as all the rest of the turnouts have some sort of throw. I didn’t know about deactivating the spring so that may be the way to go. Thanks.
RedGrey
P.S. CBQ_Guy, nice to see you on this list too! (I am also on the Yahoo CBQ list)
I have not used these myself, but they look like a good idea. I expect that the spring would have to be removed from the Peco to make these work.
I have used the humpyard levers with the peco turnouts. No need to take out the spring, they work great together.
Now everyone knows we’re a couple of Yahoos! [:0]
hump yard levers … not heard of them… where do you get them…peter
Here ya go . . .