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ELECTRICAL CONTROL & DEVELOPMENT

 

With the Fairford boards I used a H & M Duette which is still a good unit. When the turntable first became installed, I used a small Australian made controller called a “Powermite”. As the motor used for the turntable was rated at 24v, I set the controller at the third small index mark as it would give a maximum of 2-3 volts to the motor and turn the bridge at a reasonable slow speed.

 

 

My two friends Mike and Stephen controlling Fairford Branch at our local exhibition March 2006 when the rotary switch was installed on the traverser.

When Mike produced his two scenic boards, another Powermite was used to power the traverser. The final development in DC control was when the Lechlade and angle boards were added as I acquired a Gaugemaster D twin unit to run the Lechlade yard and station boards.

 

 Backside of the Lechlade boards showing the Gaugemaster unit, and you can just see the Powermite unit that controlled the traverser, at the bottom left of the photo.

 

The backside of the Fairford boards showing the Duette and Powermite controllers. Note;- the vehicles in the background are a 2nd class carriage and guard's van of 1930's vintage of New Zealand Railways (NZR) being restored at Founders Heritage Park here in Nelson.

 

As can be seen in the above two photos, to help in the operation of the layout I drew the track plan on the back boards noting the track feeds, points and switches. By this stage there were 21 switches along the back edge of the baseboards. In June of 2007 I made the decision to change over to DCC on Stoke-by-Mendip in my garage, so did the obvious thing and changed Fairford Branch to DCC in March 2008. This action led to all but two switches being removed, the two remaining switches were the rotary switch for the five track traverser and the manual turntable switch.  I used RCA plug connections for the DCC bus wiring between the boards with double plugs at the traverser and at the middle of the scenic boards to connect up the appropriate NCE unit. I use my NCE Procab 5amp unit when operating the full layout and use the Powercab if just the traverser and Fairford’s two boards.

In 2009 I converted to NCE wireless operation which was a great move and that the layout can be controlled from both sides and have better contact with the public.

I have a mixture of decoders namely Lenz, NCE, TCS, and Hornby. As British outline steam locos only have limited requirements, the Hornby 8249 decoders are good value and fit in all the locos that I operated on the layout. I have ventured into sound and have excellent results with sound cards from MyLocoSound that were reasonably priced and do what I want.

 

 NCE Procab unit and transformer just to the right of the white box with the three red lights.