Anyone with ideas on how to use reed switches to operate solenoid switches and tortoise machines . I think I remember something in one of the old Model Ralroaders but can find it now . thanx,Jim
Jim, I don't see a lot of response's to your question so will put in me feeble thoughts. I have been using magnetic reed switches for reverse loops and signals. At first placed the magnets on the loco's in the middle. I soon realized that placing them on the right side (engineers side) gave me more control over routing. The reed switch is momentary and some sort of latch relay would be required to operate a Tortoise or solenoid type switch machine. I have two reverse loops that have a isolated section activated by a reed switch on approach and the section is shut off by the second reed switch. The train remains stopped until until a button is pushed on the control panel. When the button is pushed the polarity of the track is correct for the return loop. These act as holding tracks. My first location of reed switches was such that one loco may stop directly on the switch and another loco on the second switch. I smoked a couple before I realized the problem. By placing the switches so two trains could not follow so close the problem was solved. The magnetic reed switches work great for me but I would guess many would not want to mount magnets on the loco's. In my case the price was right as a friend gave me a box of them.
Cliffsrr
Thanks for the info do you have any type of wiring diagram for your set up. I am using the digitrax set up and was wondering if the reed switches was a better solution for the switches. Any ideas would be helpful, thanks , Jim
One option is to use accessory decoders with pushbutton inputs to control the turnouts and have the reed switches as inputs to the decoders. There are some examples of this on these two pages:
http://www.dccbitswitch.com/auto_turnout.htm
http://www.wiringfordcc.com/sw_ctl.htm