Numbering turnouts for DCC

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

FYI I also posted this to the DCC4everyone yahoo group.

Is there a convention for numbering turnouts in a yard? I have a freight yard of 7 tracks and a passenger yard of 4 tracks. Going right between the freight and passenger yards is a double track mainline with cross overs. While I am using a mix of manual and tortoise right now, I would like to be able to number the turnouts so that they can eventually be thrown with DCC accessory decoders.

Since I’m beginning to get up there in my years, I would like to be able to use something that is easy to remember without having to resort to a visual map.

I thought maybe #ing them 1101-9 for freight track 1, 1201-9 for freight track 2, 1301-9 for freight track 3, etc. and numbering the 1-9 turnouts on each track from right to left since the loco approaches from the right for most of these. I “think” this should be easy enough to remember down the road. But is there a “better” way?

The same for the passenger yard except it would be the 2xxxx numbering.

I would appreciate any thoughts any of you might have on this.

Thanks. Ken

2

I think the short answer is no. Every one that I know who has tried this has done something different. In a high use, high density turnout area; DCC control could be very time consuming. In one large yard the I know of, the owner uses a throttle dedicated to the turnouts. The high use ones numbers are maintained in its “stack” of addresses.

On our club layout turnout number 1 is the lead on the east end. They are numbered sequentially through the yard to the high number (#89) which is the lead on the west end. We don’t use DCC controlled turnouts.

3

Thanks for the input Texas. Good point on the time issue in a complex yard as mine is. I thought about that a little, but didn’t think it through. Makes sense. So, I likely will not convert most to DCC, doing only the far reach ones, maybe and keeping the rest manual. Thanks again. Ken