March 18, 2015

Power routing fun

The 3-way switch has turned out to be a real head scratcher sometimes, but thankfully, I've realized a bunch of the power routing can be done with the existing DPDT contacts on a Tortoise motor.

Here is a look at the various turnout routes and how each section of rail should be powered:


The top "gauntlets" are powered just like a normal switched frog in a conventional turnout. It is just that the left and right turnouts are stacked atop each other. The center frog is powered from either the "left" or "right" routes; and dead otherwise.

Locking out the illegal route is all that is really left to do— and that can be either accomplished by clever software or hardware interlocking.