3 Way turnout wiring

[Jens]

 I'm fairly new to HO model railroading and need help wiring a 3 track turn out to be controlled by a pair of Tortise controllers.  Have 3 tracks into the turn out from a yard with the single track end leading to another spur. All turnouts are switch operated. The layout is powered by DCC. If anyone has this as a working configuration. A guiding hand would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jens 

 

[larak]

The easiest way is to think of it as two "regular" turnouts in series. That's how the points work.

Of course this would involve two electrical switches. You can (theoretically) also use a double pole three position rotary switch and diodes. I haven't had to create mine yet so I don't have a diagram. Hopefully one of our other electrical wizards will.

I think that it can be done with a single pole 3T switch and pullup resistors but now we're getting complicated.

Karl 

[jbinkley60]

 I'm fairly new to HO model railroading and need help wiring a 3 track turn out to be controlled by a pair of Tortise controllers.  Have 3 tracks into the turn out from a yard with the single track end leading to another spur. All turnouts are switch operated. The layout is powered by DCC. If anyone has this as a working configuration. A guiding hand would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Jens 

I have two of them in my yard, to reduce space.  Are you looking for help wiring the Tortoises to control throwing the turnouts or are you talking about help wiring power to the track itself ?  For the Tortoises I did nothing special.  They are really just two independent switches, except there is some interdependency in which direction they are thrown.  For instance to get to the second switch the first one has to be closed not thrown.  If this is the struggle, then I can think of two options.  The first is the traditional diode matrix and build the logic with diodes.  Another option, the one I chose, was to use stationary DCC controllers with local routes.  I chose the Digitrax DS64s.  Now I just select a route in the yard and it throws all of the switches to get the train there.  A totally manual option is two separate toggle switches.  Wire them like normal and then just ensure you throw them the right way to gt where you are going. 

If you are talking about track power itself, I used the Walthers DCC friendly 3-way switches and didn't do any special rail gapping, power routing or similar. 

 

 

 

[steamnut]

I wired mine (they are Switchmasters but wiring is identical to Tortoise) using a three-position rotary double pole switch. Each position sends the correct polarity of current to both motors to align for that routing (left - center - right). Quite a bit of wire but also perfectly straightforward. Just make sure you get a break-before-make variety of rotary switch, i.e. when you turn the switch from one position to the next, the current from the first position is comletely disengaged before the current to the next position is engaged.