If you have ever used hand held controllers to operate a layout, you will know that you need somewhere to put them when you need to deal with a derailment, or drink some tea. Often this means hanging it over the backscene, or letting it dangle down to the floor.
On previous layouts, I have used Velcro to allow the controller to be stuck at various places at the back of the layout. This is very handy, but removing the controller from the Velcro can cause some fairly major earthquakes
It has been some time since my last post. During that time there have been various improvements, design changes, failures, successes and experiments on the electrics underneath the layout. I have still not quite finished, but I do have a working system again.
The original plan was to use Merg Servo4 kits to drive micro servos controlling points and permanent magnet uncouplers. A temporary switch box connected to the 25-way connector on the layout operated the individual points and un
In my last blog entry, I showed my recently completed Merg CAN-CMD CBus controlled DCC Command Station. The Merg kit includes the PCB and all the components to populate the PCB. For future layouts I will probably just mount the PCB directly to a baseboard and hard wire it in. However, this first one I wanted to keep as a portable and flexible unit.This meant fitting it into a case with suitable sockets, switches and Led indicators.
I found a suitable case on Ebay made from black plas
Not that sort of of bus - a layout control bus. DCC is really good for controlling trains, but is less suited for controlling points and signals and the like. A separate bus for operating accessories means that a short circuit on the track does not cause points and signals to change at random. The separate bus can also use systems that are more suited to train detection and route selection.
I initially joined Merg (Model Electronic Railway Group) in order to access their servo contro
