Following on my spring cleaning and some ballast issues, I decided to fix those as well as finishing up on ballasting around the double-slip switch D2. As of now, all painted tracks have been ballasted!
Ok, I still need to finishing the center of the double slip ....
We keep going at it!
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| The red lines mark where I stopped before the vacations 😊 |
Continuing on that section, I focused on this session on painting in rust color the side tracks for the switches. It is quite tedious, but once you know where to be careful not to paint for electric contact, it can be done rather quickly.
Once dry, I will have to clean the top rail and test to make sure I'm correct in my assumption before going around the layout 😁
Continuing on the same tracks ... 😁 I covered the critical areas of the switch points and ran the airbrush to paint the sleepers.
I then used a small brush to manually paint the sleepers in those covered areas:
I then started painted the sides of the tracks with the rust paint:
Amazingly enough, I'm still able to work in the train room, yay! Typical work: detailing switches, adding missing sleepers, ballasting, and weathering. Some pictures of the current work:
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| Fixed alignment at C5/X5 and added sleepers |
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| Detailing switch C4 |
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| Detailing switch C3 |
I read an article in Loco Revue about the detailing of Peco switches to make them more realistic. It is based on BD-Concepts 3D parts.
Here's a link to the article:
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| before |
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| after |
I've been postponing wiring the frogs of the switches so far, but I thought today would be a good time to give it a try.
I found this video on Youtube quite helpful:
The Tortoise manual provides minimal information and the same goes for the Peco pamphlet. I'm using two of my previous posts: here and here.
I connect the frog (green wire) to terminal #4 or #5 of the Tortoise motor, then I connect the main feeders (red and black wires) into terminals #2 & #3 or #6 & #7:
Then, I can test with a multimeter:
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| The switch is not turned, the frog and the bottom rail have the correct polarities |
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| The switch is now turned, so those two same rails have the same polarity |
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| The switch is turned, the frog and the top rail have the correct polarities |
The same principle applies to a double slip switch. Two things to note however:
As usual, we'll conclude with a short video of an engine running through a switch with its frog wired:
Continuing on testing the layout, I focused on the double slip switch A4, which I knew had an issue. As mentioned before, wiring and controlling a double slip switch is a bit of a trial and error ...
In this current scenario, I just had to switch TA4a and TA4b. So, I just switch the wires at the terminal screw and the labels:
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| Before |
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| After |
And voila! Now, all switch points are correctly controlled by the ECoS:
Following my previous post, I added some soldering materials for the two stock rails. It's not super discreet, but it should be okay once the tracks are weathered and ballasted:
And it is now working as expected:
