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Any suggestions on how to set up a push button operation for the Children's Museum train? How would you connect a push button or simple dial where the kids could push a button and run the trains for a couple minutes? Is there anything already out there for the hobby, where you just plug the transformer into the timer and then plug in the timer in to the wall?
Thanks
Bob
You can get plug-in timers at Walmart in the hardware dept.
THe way we did it in my club was we had a block of track that was unpowered until you pushed the 'start' button. That sent power to the block to start the train. The rest of the loop was always powered. The train would run one circut and stop until the button was pushed again. Simple, but it works.
THe way we did it in my club was we had a block of track that was unpowered until you pushed the 'start' button. That sent power to the block to start the train. The rest of the loop was always powered. The train would run one circut and stop until the button was pushed again. Simple, but it works.
That's probably the best way to go about it. Unless you want to hold the button down for a moment (until the train clears the dead section), make the block barely longer than the wheelbase of the engine (plus room for it to coast, if it's flywheel equipped.)
If you want the slowing down and starting up to look better (not as jerky), and you're running DC, you could just hook in resistors to small power blocks to either side of the button-controlled block. So, you push the button, the train is connected to a low power block, then moves into a slightly higher powered block, then another, stepping up to whatever you set as full speed. Then at the end it steps back down. There was an article in MR a while back about a massive museum layout that used a system like this with their early computer-controlled signals, so that the trains would slow and stop automatically at crossovers or whatever to let the other trains by.
If you want this to work with DCC, well, your best bet (unless you're really good at writing code for microcontrollers) is to hire a midget to hide under the layout with a DCC throttle.
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