Can the wye turnout be operated with a standard Peco switch motor? I have an application for one, but it’s part of a crossover and the other turnouts will be automated… I guess I don’t understand how a switch motor can deal with three positions instead of the usual two…
Sorry for having to correct your terminology, but if it has 3 positions, it’s not a Y, it’s a 3-way. A Y turnout has only two positions, and the Peco switch motor would be an exact fit.
Because you reference code 80 rail, are you speaking of N-scale? In HO scale, the Peco products are code 70, 83, or 100 rail.
We have a couple of the Peco 3-way code 100 turnouts on our HO scale club layout, but they are not powered. A Peco 3-way turnout has two throw bars that seem to be too closely spaced to use two separate Peco motors, but maybe Peco makes a special dual motor for them.
A quick perusal of the Cherry Creek Hobbies web site in Torrington, Wyoming, who sells Peco HO scale track, tends to indicate that Peco does not have an HO scale 3-way turnout in code 83, but only code 100 – and there’s no special motor listed for use with the 3-way turnout. cchobbiies does not carry Peco N-scale track.
http://www.cchobbies.com/track/peco.htm
Peco’s web site in England does not list a 3-way N-scale turnout as being one of their products, so you apparently have a plain Y, which the regular Peco motor would fit onto.
I’ve got a couple of HO-scale (code 100) Peco 3-ways. The spacing of the throw rods is such that two Peco switch machines will mount just fine. These work very well, incidentally. However, Peco switch machines require more of a jolt than the Atlas ones, so if you’re used to Atlas you may find that you’ll need to install a Capacitive Discharge circuit to kick over the Pecos. That’s almost certainly going to be the case if you’re wiring them together with another machine or two in a crossover configuration.
Peco use to make a 3 way in n-scale but I don’t think they have for about a decade now. I haven’t seen one in ages but I do recall you could use 2 switch motors but they mounted with the arm facing each other and the coils facing away so they would fit properly. I do remember they were a bit of a pain and could be unreliable.
I went brain dead. I thought about my post after I left for work this morning. When I wrote it I was thinking about a three-way because I’m lookin for one…