Bill, I'm not sure you can use normal motor decoders to control switch machines. I don't know the exact difference as to the electronics. Generally, stationary decoders are pretty cheap, in the sense that you can control a number of switch machines using one decoder. I use the Digitrax DS44, for example, to control four Tortoises (Tony's sells it for $32, and so that comes out to $8 per turnout; much cheaper than a motor-control decoder). I suspect the stationary decoders are more of a "switch type" of control rather than a "continuous feed" type of control needed by a motor. You might even damage the switch machine (not speaking from experience here).
http://pmrr.org/Articles/DCC/DS44.htm I use stationary decoders on my layout. I have been doing that for about 7 years now. I don't use a control panel at all. The only downside I see is that you have to have a DCC system throttle that lets you control the stationary decoders. Digitrax' "simple" throttles don't support controlling switch machines, so they are useless on my layouts. I don't know about other systems' ability to control stationary decoders. I would recommend that you seriously look into stationary decoders as the solution to your problem. You connect one side to your track feeder bus, and connect the other wires to individual switch machines. Very simple installation. My decoders are hidden under scenery. Once installed and programmed (i.e. assigning unique IDs to the switch machines), they can be completely ignored. I used velcro to attach them to the layout. Note that if you have a double-track crossover, you can wire the two switch machines to one stationary decoder output, so that they are both flipped at the same time. Thereby saving one decoder's output. Another note: consider using a separate DCC power district to control your stationary decoders (yes... that does mean an extra DCC feeder bus). This is helpful when your engine runs a switch and the power district that controls the engine's decoder is shut down due to the short. If the stationary decoders are on a separate power district, you can flip the turnout's position using your throttle. I forgot to do that on my current layout, so whenever I have an engine run a switch, I have to physically push the engine back off of the switch, then using my other hand try to flip the turnout while preventing the engine from running forward again. It's not the end-of-the-world, but it is still a pain. The other thing to keep in mind, Bill, is that there may be things you can do now that make construction simple, but future operations hard. Or, things that require a bit more energy/time/money now that may make future operations easier. For me the concept of using stationary decoders is the latter. It takes some effort to get the stationary decoders installed, but now I don't have some complicated control panel to deal with. I just punch in the turnout's ID, and flip the switch on my throttle. I have operated and/or visited a good number of layouts that use control panels, and the truth of the matter is that, unless you are intimately familiar with the layout and its control panel, or the layout is small/simple, a control panel is hard to use. It is hard to design an intuitive control panel; I have yet to see one. - Peter. On 05/03/2011 7:26 am, Bill Lane wrote: > In my vein of "Keep It Simple" on my new layout I was **very against** > performing turnout control functions from the DCC handle. But for a module > that is now going to be DCC only forever, I thought about using regular > motor decoders to run the switch machines. They are cheap enough and easy to > get. > > Thank You, > Bill Lane -- Peter Vanvliet ([email protected], or [email protected]) Houston, Texas "It is easy to give up; anyone can do that..." http://pmrr.org/ (my model railroad - RSS feed <http://pmrr.org/rss.xml>) http://fourthray.com/ (my company) http://houstonsgaugers.org/ (model railroad club) -- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
