LED Wiring Puzzle.....

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rhoward

rhoward

S.L.O.&W. Trainman
OK, all you wiring ex-spurts out there. I have decided that the toggles on my facia for my hidden staging just aren't going to be able to be used correctly by most people who may come over for operations on the SLOW (mostly because I can't seem to get it right easily myself). Therefore in the interest of smooth operations, I have decided to put in a small control board at the site of the staging for ease of use. (It also can be used for one of the requirements for the NMRA Model Engineer Electrical AP Award that I have almost done.) The control board will use bi-color LEDs to show when a route is open through staging (this staging is actually a loop with three tracks). A hand drawn track schematic is shown below:

LEDPuzzle.png


The turnouts inside the staging loops are shown as circles and numbered 1, 2 , 3, & 4. The turnouts are thrown with Tortoise machines controlled by standard DPDT Toggle switches. The easiest place to power the LEDs would be directly from the toggles I think.

The question is......... How would you set up and use the LEDs to show the open route? I'm talking how to wire them, how many, what would be the clearest way to lay the whole thing out on a small control panel.........??????:confused:
 
Ray,
Do you want the LED's on the control panel or next to the turnouts? If it's on the control panel, wouldn't a DPDT switch just like you have drawn work? Just take the wires for the LED from those middle terminals and use them to power the LED since the polarity should change depending on which direction the switch is thrown. You'd still have to decide what red or green means in terms of which way the switch is thrown relative to coming into and out of staging.
 
Yep Jim, I plan to have the LEDs on the control panel (one reason it would be better to use the DPDTs than the ones on the torti). How would you arrange the LEDs and use the red and green to show the route through the staging?
 


At the club I go to, a green light is straight and a red light is the diverging route.

For the board make a schematic showing the track and place the lights where the turnout is. Or you could put a number on the turnout and them number each DPLD.

Make sense?
 
Ray, here is a page from Circuitron that was helpful for me. I'm planning on switching area control panels (4 or 5 for my layout) so an "engineer/switchman" can move his cars as needed. At this time, I'm using Digitrax Zephyr with one UT4 (soon to be 2 - I hope). The engineer will be able unplug and step to the destination area control panel and plug in to drop or pick up more cars. On the control panels I will use a red and a green on each of the 2 switch legs. They will be wired off the control panel toggle as shown in the attached PDF. Circuitron's catalog - http://circuitron.com/index_files/301CAT.pdf is very helpful.

I just ordered a bunch of LEDs and will have some available if you are interested. ( screwed up on an eBay purchase)
 
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