This is the layout I’m planning on given the space made available to me. I’m using the NCE Powercab DCC system and need to know how to handle the reversing loops. I know I need to purchase an auto reverser. Just what kind, how many, and where exactly to hook them up are my questions. Or am I in over my head? Thanks.
You’ve got 2 of them, which means you should get 2 reversers.
The first is basically the whole right third of the layout. Insulate the tracks just to the right of the turnouts that come off the main oval.
The second is the crossover track on the main oval. You should insulate the tracks just as you leave the turnouts on the top and bottom of the main oval. Note that this is going to give you a fairly short insulated section for the reverser. You may have problems with long trains, particularly passenger cars with lights where the rolling stock will span one set of insulators at the end of the train while the locomotive is crossing the insulators at the other end. Maybe someone else can come up with a clever solution to this problem, which I’d really like to see because it’s on my layout, too.
Couple of things…
First, glad to see you got the pics up. Hope my description helped.
Second, do you have access to all sides of this layout, because if you don’t you’re not going to be able to reach it all for maintinance and so on.
The rest MisterBeasley got.
As MisterBeasley said there are two reversing sections. However I would contend the first reversing section is the squiggeldy track that joins the top-left oval, with the oval on the right. It suffers the same problem by being too short too.
There is (at least) one way to do this with a single auto reverser. To do this make the section controlled by the auto reversing unit to be one that contains the entire top straight track, half of the crossover in the upper left oval, and include the turnout in the right curve of the upper left oval. That should be a long enough section of track to get a whole train into. BUT, the problem is that it could potentially be constantly flipping even if the train was just running in the upper left loop. That could be fixed to by making certain the “at rest” condition happened when a train was orbiting in the upper left loop.
P.S. That would be five places both rails have gaps (or insulated rail joiners) to make the one reversing block.
Well, I’m finally at the point of trying to install the reversing unit I purchased from Tony’s. However, I haven’t been able to get it to work yet. I know very little of wiring or the terminlogy used. I just bought insulated rail joiners and am just working on the right half of my layout. If I put the insulated rail joiners as stated above by MisterBeasley do I just need a regular terminal rail joiner and connect that to the reversing unit? If so where do I place the teminal rail joiner? If this is incorrect, what else should I be doing? Other posts I have read talk about gaps and I am not sure what or where I should put them. Thanks in advance.
Fellers,
Maybe I’m missing something here, but it looks to me like he actually has three reversing loops, from left to right. That section on the right of the layout reverses back onto the other two reversing loops if I am seeing this correctly.
Respects,
What appears to be two reversing loops on the left is actually only one because they share a common track which is the actual reversing track. This is clearer if you remove the reversing sections from the plan. Since only two sections have to be removed to have no reversing, you only have two reversing sections.
Because both of these tracks are short it may be necessary to include adjacent tracks in the reversing sections to get the whole train in the section and avoid momentary shorts. Of course if all the cars have plastic wheels this won’t be a problem.
Enjoy
Paul