I am planning my Yard and want to be able to turn power off to different leads into and out of the yard. Which toggel should I use, DPDT, SPDT? or does it not matter? I had much luck hooking up my Tortise machines with DPDT toggels.
thanks
bunker45 wrote: I am planning my Yard and want to be able to turn power off to different leads into and out of the yard. Which toggel should I use, DPDT, SPDT? or does it not matter? I had much luck hooking up my Tortise machines with DPDT toggels.thanks
Depends on how you've done your basic wiring. If you use common rail wiring, you'll need a SPST, simple on-off switch, for the other rail. If you're not using common rail, you'll need a DPST (or DPDT and ignore two of the terminals), which provides one on-off switch for each rail, which will throw in unison. If you want to select between two power packs, you'll need a DPDT center off switch.
Assuming that you can totally isolate one rail where you want to kill power to a track, all it takes to do so is a SPST toggle in the power lead to the isolated rail. That will work for either Analog DC or DCC. If you are going to use analog DC to power that track from either of two separate power packs, Tom got it right - either SPDT center-off (common rail wiring) or DPDT center-off (and make sure both rails are isolated.)
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
An SPST should suffice for most cases.
If you're an old-time DC guy building a DCC layout, though, you will probably not need to do this. DCC engines don't need to sit on "dead" tracks to keep them from moving when you're running trains on the rest of the layout. If you're going to use the tracks for storage of illuminated passenger cars or cabeese, though, then a kill switch might be a useful option.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.