kf7strng wrote:Hello everyone.
I am curious about using either tricolor, or bicolor leds for turnout indicators. I DO NOT need the fancy singal masts and evrything else that maes them pretty and clean looking. I am just starting my layout, and just want something to show me the status of the turnouts themselves. something like, displaying red when the turnout is closed, or grenn when it's safe to proceed. I wanted to run it off of track power, and I am aware I will need to introduce an appropriate sized resistor to reduce trackpower from 17-18 volts down to about 2-3 volts. I would like someones opinion on my idea of using the turnout ITSELF as the "on\off" switch. Can this be done? I SUPPOSE I should note that I am using ATLAS brand code 100 custom-line turnouts, and one Wye. I have been reading about doing this with dcc(I am using DC ONLY), and the site said that atlas turnouts are all easy to do this to(using DCC) and I don't know how weasy it s to do with DC. ANY help will be appreciated.
This can be done with DC or DCC and Tortoise machines very simply. Currently on my DCC layout at my club we use the same output to the switch machines from the decoder, that powers the machine, to power a bi-colored LED. The bi-colored LED is one with two legs, but with polarity one way, is green, and the other, is red. Using this principal, the output of the switch decoder will output the poliarty one way when the turnout is normal to hold the machine that way, the other when its reversed to hold the machine the other way for the open, or reversed position. So connecting a two leg, bi color LED to this output will give you the green light if the turnout is normal, and red light when its reversed! (dont forget your resistors, of course) You can use this same idea when your doing DC since with tortoise machines your going to either be putting power to it one way to hold it normal, and reversing polarity it to put it in reverse.
At my club we built diagrams of yards and interlockings and built little panels which got mounted into the side walls of the layout to do this type of turnout indictation. it works very well, and if theres a failure of a decoder for whatever reason the bi color LED will not light,since the decoder is not putting out any power to hold the switch in that direction. Very good troubleshooting tool! If you would like photos of what we have done at my club layout I can have them after this wednesday. In fact, i can even make a youtube demonstration of how it works!
*Note, as far as i know, this will not work with coil based switch machines
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