KATO Turnout Indicators

[Roger Locniskar]

I've been having a bugger of a time working out a light system that will tell me if a turnout is headed straight or turned out. I know KATO makes one, but they are pricy and I think there is a clean homebuilt system possible. Anybody have any ideas, shemactics or consoling words?

 

[Russ Bellinis]

Wiring up indicator lights are easy, but without any information about what operates your turnouts, telling you how to do it will take a book. I started to give instructions for all of the scenarios I could think of, but it was so long it was looking like war and peace and I had barely started. You need to tell us everything you can think of about how you operate your turnouts, what sort of control you are using, do you have a central control panel or is it walk around? Are you using manual switch control or switch machines and if electric switch machines, is it twin coil or slow motion stall or mootorized machines?

 

[Relic]

While it would be groovy to have lights I have setled for making sure all the buttons are one way fir straight and the other way for diverging so I can tell at a glance what's going on.{assuming there is not a piece of ballast in the points putting one of my GP's in the ditch}

 

[Roger Locniskar]

I've been having a bugger of a time working out a light system that will tell me if a turnout is headed straight or turned out. I know KATO makes one, but they are pricy and I think there is a clean homebuilt system possible. Anybody have any ideas, shemactics or consoling words?

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MORE INFO
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These KATO #6 Turnouts have power applied to all track connections, they are controlled by Digitrax DCC decoders modules (I got the Zepher system for christmas and have not made the time to properly install it). This delay is mostly due to wanting to refurbish my ****chyard, currenty my main feature of the layout (new feeder tracks, clean the inners of the turnouts, new track connectors and re-insalll it with handling the parts once to aviod damage)

So a voltage sense of which way the moving bit isn track is located seems not to be a solution, since all three sides have power. I looked into (liturally) connecting wire to the necessary three points inside the turnout, but it looked like there was zippo room to any added any harware (even 20 guage multi strand).

I think that covers it.
bio-diesel roger (aka corn diesel)

 

[cidchase]

Hi Roger,
I suggest using a latching relay for each turnout which will remember the
last control signal and light the indicator lamps or LED's correspondingly.
The relay requires a momentary signal to set it and a separate momentary
signal to reset it. These signals correspond to the control signals sent to
the switch motor.

This will not indicate the true position of the turnout in the event of stuck
points or inoperative motors, but I expect it's as reliable as anything you could
squeeze under that turnout! Just a thought, anyway.

 

[cidchase]

http://www.vitaconnect.com/Photos/LEDSchematic.jpg

12v latching relay RLY-87 from allelectronics.com
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/RLY-87/500600/12VDC_DPDT_LATCHING_RELAY,_PC_MOUNT_.html

BTW, all this info came from trains.com