Monday, April 5, 2010

Modifyng turnouts for the overhead


Well, we have heard a lot about the fact that the Atlas turnouts have weak throw bars and these turnouts are going to be relatively inaccessible. So, it was time to modify them to make them better with no maintenance. I also had to put in micro switches to power the frog plus come up with a way to mount the motors above the layout since this was overhead. The last problem was to control a turnout in the middle of the holding ladder.
So, you can see I mounted the Switchmaster motors to a plywood block. The throwrod also controlled the micro switch. I changed the throw bar to a printed circuit board with a brass block that the throwrod went through. That PC board throw bar was screwed to the points. I tried to do all th ework while the bench waork was on the ground before it was raised to the ceiling. I will lay the loop track once it is up in the air.
The ladder on the right in the last picture is down while the one on the left is just sketched out. I tested the circuits to be sure there were no shorts. Fortunately, there were none.








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