Demondrille Junction

This is true, I should explain that it was intentional so far as I have curved many of the points and crossings to replicate the prototype track plan. When I tried some plastic rail joiners they weren't strong enough to hold the modified crossing and point rails in place which would try to spring back to their normal shape somewhat and I didn't like their gaps at uniform spots. Soldering everything first helped me greatly getting the geometry flowing and lined up plus the staggered gaps added later kind of looks better without being as obvious. Track is Peco 75 and with say 3 large points paralleled diverging to the branch line the joins kind of looked settracky. I wish I could show a before and after. I do have a couple of other but not so dramatic examples though. The first pic shows a trailing crossover. Admittedly the middle joins could've been closer there but at this spot I did use insul joiners. The other legs of the frogs will be cut further away from the original joins which have been soldered with shortened metal rail joiners. Second pic shows a trailing crossing with all joins soldered with shortened metal joiners and insulation cuts placed further away from the middle join. The cuts for the frogs' outer legs are off screen. It makes the track look more continuous IMO. I'm trialling some paints at the moment hence the blur and not so clean rail heads. Owing to the initial soldering of everything, only small sections are currently powered with obvious conflicts gapped and isolated. I'm slowly working out the rest. Another issue will be as we down south head towards summer, gapping alone wont ensure electrical isolation which is where I'll be adding plastic shims and cutting in expansion joints which will be jumpered. I do get your points though and very much agree, particularly the bit about putting gaps in irrespective of any other gaps added for section switching. I wasn't going to do all of them but I'm finding it far easier to work things out by doing so. And yes the rear of the layout is practically against a wall but still accessible. I do like the "back is black" adage. It's not too late for me to change. I went red is back and blue is near and arrgh, nothing rhymes. Unfortunately whilst I tried to keep blue (-ve) towards the front, I've managed to solder some droppers on points back to front and never fixed it. The only constant colour coding I've managed to uphold is green frogs which is obvious.

Thanks Crosland. After I posted I thought I should just ask GM but got an "unable to process" error when trying to submit the online email form. It seemed obvious but I wanted to check. Sol, thanks for that second link. I have seen Steve's Railway Pages before but forgot about that page on CR, I've got a terrible habit of not adding pages to favourites. And Clive, thanks for your contributions and vids too, it's all been taken on board. When researching CR I came across an old thread in modelrailforum where someone had a Morley go south when it interacted with a Gaugemaster. Unfortunately it doesn't go into detail on how it happened or what exactly happened, but that's what spurred my initial research and question after not being able to find answers. Since then I can conclude compatibility isn't an issue between different types of controllers to implement CR. However, some points that are prominent in one of 34thletter's post 'If you have the knowledge of the underlying principles, necessary technique and the skill to apply it' I can confidently say at the moment I'm not there yet. And what DavidCBroad said 'Sooner or later you will connect both controllers to the same bit of track', well that's happened too a number of times just with the two sides of the GM as I've wired crossings incorrectly. Eg, an Up Main loco has traveresed a crossing and affected a stationary or moving Down Main loco. So I'm still learning and making silly mistakes with a long way to go.

I'm glad that diagram has come up. It confused me before and more recently during my search into controllers. Like Governor said earlier, it's a diagram they've used on a few instruction sheets but changed wording to suit. I didn't really understand what they meant until some answers provided in this thread, so thank you all. With regards to common return, the need for one transformer per controller, and the GM panel controllers and transformers; I don't know too much about transformer construction but can I assume the T1 pictured below with two outputs has two independent secondary windings and can be considered as two separate transformers? I believe that's what 34theletterbetweenB&D was referring too on the first page but have to check. "... two separate transformers,* one per track output, (or two completely independent low voltage windings on a common transformer frame) are required for this device, ... " I'm not getting a a T1 but to free up a mains socket I had thought previously about replacing the two wall warts for my twin panel controller with a cased M1 transformer which I only assume is similar inside to the T1.

Oh I hope not. This subforum seems to be the most DC friendly place there is with a knowledge base to suit. It's refreshing not to have to justify why one wants to meddle with at times complicated DC problem solving when asking questions. Thanks to all that have responded. I believe my biggest problem will be me implementing common return correctly so far as poor planning and making silly mistakes is one of my attributes . So I'm leaning towards running pairs of wires where needed and implement cab and block control with appropriate switching to create some interlocking. I started with an interesting perhaps complicated prototypical track plan without any circuitry or electrics included in my interpretation. I threw down flex track and modified electrofrog points to match the plan then soldered every join with the aim of cutting in isolating, expansion and block sections later, some of which I've done. Needless to say there's been a lot of short circuits up to this point. To move forward I'm going to have to do what I'm not good at, a proper plan and implement some order and neatness. I've not used uniform colour codes for wires either and I've recorded nothing so far on what I've done, just keeping it in my head and it's getting crowded in there. I still think common return will have a place in regards to the Seeps and later signalling plus relays I plan on installing but every system will have it's own common return except the controllers which will all be separated. There's a simplified, condensed plan of the layout below, basically highlighting the points and crossings involved. Minimum of three controllers for starters with one for Up Main, Down main and Branch. Where one controller hands off to another, say when a train traverses down main to down branch, I'll just have to bring the train to a stop before the swap is made.

Ah yes, I should've clarified there. Reading my first post again I feel I should add a little more detail. The two transformers for the Gaugemaster panel controller are wall warts, fully enclosed plastic, not the T1 open frame type and the Morley has two track outputs supplied by two independent inbuilt transformers.

Thanks very much Rob, that's reassuring. Despite my research I couldn't see this scenario covered but it makes sense re current path, and isolation/insulation of transformers will be no problem. I'll proceed with some testing, cheers.

Hi all. I've a basic question with regards to common return track/controller wiring. Do the controllers have to be the same type or brand? From searches in the past I know that each controller must connect to separate transformers but I've not been able to find any mention of the subject relating to controller compatibility. Maybe it doesn't matter, but I don't know. My situation is I have a GM UDS panel controller which has two track outputs with switchable inertia/brake and a newly acquired Morley Vector Zero Two. Thanks to Mikesndbs thread I knew about the different waveforms of the two controllers and I'm worried if one might damage the other through a common return. Any thoughts?