Isolating points - am I on the right track?

When I built my original garden railway nearly 20 years ago now, cash was short, so I separated out control into three layers. The top two layers were housed in a home made portable box, that lived in the garage and was lifted out to run the railway and plugged into a 25 way computer plug / socket that lived in a waterproof box screwed to a paving slab and sealed with silicon. A long lead connected the box to a socket in the house for mains power - not ideal.
  • The top layer was a Aristo Train Engineer that provided wireless track power control, run from a Gaugemaster power supply.
  • The second layer controlled the (I think I had three) points via a mimic panel and run from a Scalextrix 12v power supply driving LGB point motors.
  • The third layer was entirely "ground based" and is relevant to your question. On my railway, one rail was common and the other was selectively isolated by LGB yellow insulated fishplates, where isolation was needed to hold locomotives. EPL switches were wired to the mainline sections and power was switched, on or off enabling locomotives to be held in loops or sidings.
This worked reliably (usually with a pre-season solder fest, using a 100w soldering iron, of dry or failed joints) until the last sections were removed this year, mainly to reduce the amount of maintenance because the "Triang Hornby" style self isolating points are no longer needed following an upgrade to DCC a couple of years ago.

I hope this helps a bit

Tony D
 
Gizzy said:
And you can always look for switches at Gaugemaster.

When and if you do have point motors, they supply a switch with diodes for £3.65 each, a lot less than the LGB box....

http://www.gaugemaster.com/item_details.asp?code=GM511&style=main&strType=g&Mcode=Gaugemaster+GM511
Click to expand...

Hi Gizzy, I`m with you, many years ago, when I started to build my railway, I bought some LGB points with motors, from Guagemaster, and I asked them how to wire them. they supplied me with a switch, and 2 diodes, and a little wiring diagram. You can also get these from Maplins. over the years I have extended, as you do, and now have the end of the line, excuse the pun. no more extending. I now have 11 sets of points, all operated by these switches, and diodes, and have been working for years. I made up a smaller panel 2 years ago, which can be disconnected and stored indoors. There is quite a lot of wiring required, but as far as I am concerned worth the effort. I used bell wire, (Maplins), mainly cos it has to be outside buried under the ballast all the time. The critical thing to remember when soldering the diodes to the switches, is that they must be in opposite directions. 20160530_141306.jpg 20160530_142356 (2).jpg 20160530_142410.jpg 20160530_143113.jpg 20160530_134703.jpg 20160530_135056 (2).jpg 20160530_135535.jpg
 
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