turnout wireing

[mcouvillion]

Bardan,

You need to use normally open momentary contacts with your Atlas switch machines. The double pole double throw (DPDT) switches you are using leave power on the switch motor and it burns the internal coil up. With these switch motors, you only want power on for an instant, just long enough to change the position of the turnout. Otherwise - poof!!!

Go by Radio Shack and ask for small momentary contact switches. They are pushbuttons with two connections on the back. The color will be red or black. Make sure they are NORMALLY OPEN. When you pu***he button, you complete the circuit. There are other maufacturers of the momentary contact switches, but you can demonstrate what the Atlas pushbutton is doing with these. Good luck.

Mark C.

[Anonymous]

All of the turnouts are Atlas Snap switch. Before I used the small Atlas slide switch and it worked good. I just haven't figured this toggle out. It has no in between position its on or on. The six terminals on the back make up seperate cicuirts inside. I took one toggle apart . I have a stack of model railroads mag. but can't find a digagram. Hope this helps.

[MisterBeasley]

What kind of switch motors are you using? If you have twin-coil machines, like Atlas or Peco, then you need momentary-contact controls for them. It sounds like you have a double-pole, double-throw (DPDT) toggle switch, which would be appropriate only for constant-voltage switch motors like Tortoise.

[Anonymous]

I had a small layout before I retired, now I've built a much bigger one and I need to use a simple toggle switch for my turnouts. All I do is burn them up so something is wrong. The toggles have (on-on) with 6 terminals on back. Can someone draw a simple drawing to show me which wires go to which terminals? Thanks[?]