Hi Everyone.
I'm pretty new to the MR world but have taken an interest since I was a little boy.
A quick background - When I met my father-in-law, he was a keen DC modeller, but his 12' x 7' layout had been hanging from the garage roof for about 25 years and had fell into disrepair. With my interest, I always said to him that I would be keen to get it down, and get it back up and running again, and after reading many forums etc, I learnt about DCC and told him thats what we were going to use. And so that's what we are in the process of doing... well, we haven't used the old table - its beyond repair, so I build a new bench, ready to start all over.
After many "discussions" around the proposed layout, I gave in to his what I believe to be over-complicated design, that has far too may turnouts and linking tracks.
With that said, with some tweaking, we have 3 tracks that can be run independently of each other. Fantastic. As a trial, we'd hooked up track to a 6 x 4 layout and got to see and understand the basics of DCC operation.
Back to the layout... here lays the problem.
Essentially, the outer loop and middle loop just "run around" the outside of the table, with turnouts linking the tracks in several places.
The inner loop however is going to cause me an electrical nightmare... I think.
I can see that we have a simple balloon return loop and a turnout within that loop leads to a wye.... oh goody!
I am aware of the reversing loop issues and it wasn't until I read on a forum that someone said the easiest way to find the issues is to use the 2-colour pen trick and trace the tracks until the different colours run into each other.
On my first attempt, I found that a short section upon entering the balloon loop was a reverse loop section, and of course, one of the arms on the wye was the other. What I didn't realise until my 2nd and 3rd traces was that depending on where you start the pens can determine how many reverse loops you can have. Those subsequent attempts yielded 4 reverse loop sections (all straight sections), but that scared me.But my reason for subsequent tracing is because those 2 reverse loop sections that I found initially are quite short and knowing the rule about the train being shorter than the loop has meant that I probably wouldn't be able to run anything other than a loco and 1 car/truck behind in order to remain shorter than the reverse loop section.
So, upon playing with the colours and trying to find a way to make the loops larger, I found an easy way to incorporate most of the balloon loop which works simply enough.My second section I'm unsure about - hence my post here.I need help in determining whether my alternative option for a reversing loop section is possible, since it contains a number of turnouts etc within the loop section.
The first picture shows my original small sections of reverse loop.In the second picture, I'm referring to the spots marked as B and B as the entry and exit points for the second reverse loop. A & A is the normal balloon loop.
So my problem.... After all that, can anyone tell me if B & B is possible? Do I have them in the right spots? Can anyone see any other options?
I've tried looking for answers to this on many forums, but nothing seems to cover this...
I appreciate everyone's input.
I pondered this for a few minutes and I think you have an unneeded conflict at lower middle-left, in the left hand loop, where you have A beside the B. Why switch the left/right orientation there? You did that because to the left of the top A you switched them. Why?
Hi Selector.
I'm not quite following your question - maybe its the lack of sleep... You're meaning why is the A at the bottom, when the polarity could continue on further? It was just to show the entire loop, or more so where i thought I could put the gaps in. Is there something not right?
As a general rule, you shouldn't have a reverse section inside another reverse section. That can cause the two autoreverse units to fight each other.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
If I can find some time today, I will take a closer look at your drawings and maybe come up with something of value to offer. I am a great proponent of the 2-color rail drawings and I may have been among the guys suggesting that approach that you read about in some other thread.
I will offer a piece of generic advice at this time. I have built a lot of straight reversing sections as opposed to the traditional "reverse loop". I have found over time that it is often better to not treat the reversing section as such, relying in the alternative to treat the rest of the layout as a reversing section(s), especially when the obvious reversing section is too short to work well. Hope that makes sense.
Rich
Alton Junction
In my own defense, I did what follows quickly, so I reserve the right to retract my analysis. LOL.
I do not see a nested reversing section, that is one reversing section inside another. Rather, I see two distinct reversing sections, and you have correctly identified what I call the points of opposite polarity, as indicated by your circles.
In your diagram, there are two points of opposite polarity, one for each reversing section. So, what you now need to do is to completely isolate each reversing section from the rest of the layout by gapping the rails in the appropriate spots.
I have modified your diagram to show the locations of the proposed gaps. You can move these gaps to make the reversing sections longer if necessary. You appear to have the space to do that.
The blue and red circles represent pairs of gaps. The blue circles are for Reversing Section A, and the red circles are for Reversing Section B. Each circle represents a pair of gaps on the the two rails affected at each location.
Give it a shot.
Hi Rich.
Nevermind about that question about the red dot to the bottom right.... just realised that was the section of track to be reversed to allow for a long train.
Related, but slightly different question then.... If I place insulated joiners at all of those points, I would need to run feeders from the track bus to those isolated sections, but can I wire them as the opposite polarities in those sections, or should it be the same as the other sections and let the auto reverse module do its job?
Thanks
BMMattIf I place insulated joiners at all of those points, I would need to run feeders from the track bus to those isolated sections, but can I wire them as the opposite polarities in those sections, or should it be the same as the other sections and let the auto reverse module do its job?
A reversing section is only reversed some of the time, depending on the path of the train so I would let the module do it's thing.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
BMMatt Hi Rich. Nevermind about that question about the red dot to the bottom right.... just realised that was the section of track to be reversed to allow for a long train. Related, but slightly different question then.... If I place insulated joiners at all of those points, I would need to run feeders from the track bus to those isolated sections, but can I wire them as the opposite polarities in those sections, or should it be the same as the other sections and let the auto reverse module do its job? Thanks
Here is the important thing to remember when wiring a reversing section.
The two power wires that connect to the input side of the auto reverser should come from the track bus or dedicated sub-bus. All of the feeder wires inside the reversing section should connect to the output side of the auto reverser.
All of the feeder wires inside the reversing section should maintain the same polarity. For example, if you are using, say, red and blue feeder wires inside the reversing section, all of the red feeder wires connect to one of the output side ports on the auto reverser and all of the blue feeder wires connect to the other port on the output side of the auto reverser.
However, it does not matter if the feeder wires inside the reversing section match the polarity of the feeder wires in the non-reversing section(s) of the layout since the job of the auto reverser is to match polarities between the reversing section and the adjacent non-reversing section.
Ok, thanks.... So, based on the placement of dots you've put one the picture, how many ARM's do I need? My first thought was 2, for the 2 sections, but is it in fact 3, for the 3 pairs of dots, or can 1 module control more than 1 section? So, looking at the red dots for instance, I would have 1 ARM with outout (red and blue) wiring to the inside of the gapped rails at 3 locations - the right hand end and the 2 branches of the Wye. Have I got that correct?
And so thinking the same way for the blue dots, I could have 1 ARM with 4 red feeder wires to the 4 blue dots and 4 blue feeder wires to the opposite rail at the same location?
Really appreciating the knowledge!
Cheers
Matt
Matt, you would need two auto-reversers, one for the reversing section gapped by the blue dots and one for the reversing section gapped by the red dots.
The wye would actually be part of the main layout. In this instance, it would not be part of the reversing section. A wye does not necessarily need to be part of a reversing section.