Q: Adjusting the Walthers Traffic Light Controller Module

[IronBeltKen]

I'm hoping somebody on here has one of these, and can share some insight on it.

I had this on my previous layout, but have not yet bothered to put it on my current one because I want to slow down the frequency of changing the light colors. When I had it on the first layout, the lights seemed to stay at one color aspect (green, yellow or red) for ~5 seconds at a time. I never bothered to use a stopwatch to mark the exact time intervals, but the durations were very short.

This rapid sequence creates a problem since I like to do layout photography, and sometimes need to use slow shutter speeds for the best results - leading to an image where the light may be both green and yellow, or maybe even all three colors at the same time! I would gladly bypass the controller and have it show just one aspect permanently in each direction [like some of the local malfunctioning prototypes in my area] but I don't want to risk burning out the LEDs from using an under-rated resistor in the circuit. I don't know what the technical specs are for the LEDs, beyond the fact that the controller expects an input voltage of 19vDC.

Has anyone ever taken one of these boxes apart and seen if there is anything on the inside that can be adjusted to slow the sequence down?

 

[Rico]

Hmm I’ll have to dig thru some boxes to find mine.
Hope I have the instructions somewhere.

 

[peroni]

There is nothing that you can adjust inside, there ia a 5 volt regulator and a 12 vollt regulator
along with an IC and a few other discrete components like resistors etc.

The best way for you to achieve what you want is this way, the wires come from the traffic lights to a
resistor which then go into the terminal block on the side of the controller, now what you want to do is
take out the red wire on one side and the green wire on the other side leaving the resistors attached
to the wires and then the black wire, join the red and green wires together with their resistors still
attached and put a 12v positive to them on the resistor end that goes into the terminal block and the
negative wire to the black wire resistor end with its resistor, this way you will have a red light on on two
of the traffic lights and a green light on the other two for the opposite traffic flow.

 

[Rico]

But as in the movies, never ever cut the blue wire!