Turnout Control

[regme]

Hi

 

Is there another way to throw a HO scale peco point, rather than using a wire through the hole provided. Can you use the pins on the outside, using a servo mounted under the board?

 

I'm not going to use surface point motors.

 

Cheers

[Pete the Elaner]

Peco motors clip directly to the underside of the point.

They will also mount under the board with the longer pin through the hole in the centre of the tie bar. Other motors such as SEEP, Gaugemaster, Tortoise & Cobalt can also be used in the same way.

[KingEdwardII]

2 hours ago, regme said:

 

Is there another way

Why are you asking?

 

Yours, Mike

[Grovenor]

You can use servos in many ways and drive the point from the central hole or either side.

Just play around with a servo and point till you devise something that suits your need.

[regme]

I have mounted servos before from the underside using the centre hole, but sometimes the wire drops too low in the hole or comes out too high.  This is due more to my ability to cut it the right length in the first place or I just didn't get the servo/point motor mount dead centre.

 

I has hoping for a more forgiving way of doing it.  For an N scale layout the holes on the outside of the point so I basically bend the wire into the hole from the top and had another hole a few sleepers down where the wire went down to the servo underneath.  A photo would have helped.

 

I guess I could do the same thing with the hole in the centre.

 

I just wondering if there was another way of doing this.

[RobinofLoxley]

MTB point motors have a clamp enabling the activating pin to be set over a wide range by slackening a screw and placing the pin as required. They also have considerable adjustment in terms of positioning as the fixing lugs are oval slots. Positioning is really the same on any gauge. But like anything in this area, they are fiddly in some ways

[KingEdwardII]

22 hours ago, regme said:

sometimes the wire drops too low in the hole or comes out too high.

Your mounting for the wire needs to have a means of vertical adjustment - it's as simple as that.

 

As @RobinofLoxley mentions above, the MTB MP1 motors have a very simple clamp for the wire which allows for very straightforward adjustment - my approach it to slack off the clamp just enough to allow me to mount the motor with the wire deliberately set too high and then push the wire down from above until the top of the wire is flush with the top of the switch centre hole. The clamp can then be tightened to prevent any further vertical movement.

 

Other brands of motor have similar forms of adjustment available.

 

I don't know how you are mounting your servos, but you need to provide for some kind of adjustment mechanism for the vertical position of the wire. When servos are used in model aircraft, they often face the same problem of wires needing adjustment and you can buy fixings for the servos which provide this.

 

Yours, Mike.

[DCB]

The old school way was to put a bell crank through the baseboard with a short omega loop looped around the blob on the end of the tie bar, the Peco surface mounted point motor and its extension rods use the same idea.
 

[regme]

I'm not sure I can visualise that, is the bell crank under the board?

[melmerby]

H&M solenoid motors had a long shaft with a bell crank at the end for under baseboard use. It wasn't used if above the baseboard as there was also a crank on the motor.

The motor sits under the baseboard the shaft goes through the B/B and the bell crank is above with an omega loop from the crank to the point, I fixed them to the outer end of the tie bar.

Codar solenoids were very similar

[NoelG]

On 07/06/2022 at 08:40, regme said:

Hi

 

Is there another way to throw a HO scale peco point, rather than using a wire through the hole provided. Can you use the pins on the outside, using a servo mounted under the board?

 

I'm not going to use surface point motors.

 

Cheers

Recommend Cobalt stall point motors for reliable slow operation and frog polarity switching.

[melmerby]

On 07/06/2022 at 08:40, regme said:

Hi

 

Is there another way to throw a HO scale peco point, rather than using a wire through the hole provided. Can you use the pins on the outside, using a servo mounted under the board?

 

 

1 hour ago, NoelG said:

Recommend Cobalt stall point motors for reliable slow operation and frog polarity switching.

Which use a wire through the hole.................☹️

[NoelG]

On 14/06/2022 at 23:19, melmerby said:

 

Which use a wire through the hole.................☹️

Ah apologies, Servos can be used to push/pull the surface mounted tie bar. Also with Cobalt if there is a base board cross member under the point requiring the point motor to be mounted other than under the points tie bar centre.

[melmerby]

I use Tortoises and have mounted them at all sorts of crazy angles and used home made cranks of varying shapes to transfer the motion to the Tortoises

[Michael Hodgson]

1 hour ago, melmerby said:

I use Tortoises and have mounted them at all sorts of crazy angles and used home made cranks of varying shapes to transfer the motion to the Tortoises

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, Michael Hodgson said:

Yes

You can see the lever at the front with 5 attachment points for accurate control of the turnout.🙂