Märklin 56135 Scale 1 Hp0/Hp1 colour light signal

idlemarvel

Neither idle nor a marvel
13 Jul 2015
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I bought a couple of these a while back and they have been sitting on my desk waiting to be fitted to my layout. 56135 is a two aspect red/green entrance (Einfahrt), exit (Ausfahrt) or block signal. Being Scale 1 (1:32) they are smaller (height 220 mm) than the LGB (RhB) 2 aspect red/green signal but more realistic in appearance for German railways, and about half the price.

They also do set 56136 which has two signals, a three aspect red/amber/green Hp0/Hp1/Hp2 and distant signal Vr0/Vr1/Vr2.

I'm not sure how well they would fare outdoors, probably not very well IMO.

The signals come with instructions and a self adhesive sticker sheet for the red/white stripe on the signal mast, and various numbers for the signals. These conform to the German signalling system for block, entrance and exit signals, which vary according to the track number and direction of travel - "counting direction" (Zählrichtung) or "opposite direction" (Gegenrichtung) - what Brits call "up" and "down" lines.

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The signals have LED lights which can be operated with up to 19 v DC (or 16 v AC - this is Märklin). The LED lights have three wires, red, green and a yellow (common). The LEDs have protective resistors.

I wanted to operate these signals from a Massoth switch decoder, which can be configured to operate lights instead of motors, using CV 51-58, The two outputs of each Massoth switch decoder port alternate between -ve voltage and + common, so if you are controlling two LED lights you only need two wires to the lights. The Märklin signals have three wires, but by using two diodes you can reduce that to two wires.

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I have a habit of changing my indoor layout every few months, so I wanted these lights to be free-standing and attachable to the track, like LGB semaphore signals. I got some of these project boxes which are roughly the size of LGB point motors:

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I drilled a 3 mm hole on the top to pass the wires through, and then screwed the mast to the top half of the box. The block connector shown in the previous picture was superglued to the top half of the box, and excess wires covered with black insulating tape. To connect the signal to the track, an LGB 5071 cable holder was used, hooked over the bottom half of the box and held in place when the top half is clipped on, hence the cut-out in the earlier picture. The end result is shown below:

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The red and green wires are connected to port 2 of the switch decoder (black not the standard blue because I painted it!) which is configured to continuous output at full track voltage - I run at 19 v . If you run at higher voltage you can adjust the output voltage with CV 71-74.

Here is the signal in operation:

signals.jpg
 

idlemarvel

Neither idle nor a marvel
13 Jul 2015
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I got the 56136 signal set which has an Hp0/Hp1/Hp2 colour "home" signal and a Vr0/Vr1/Vr2 colour "distant" signal.
I connected them in the same way as the other signals as in post #1. These signals have three settings but using one port from my accessory / static decoder I could only choose two of the three. For the home signal I chose red or green/yellow and for the distant green/green or yellow/yellow. Each LED is individually wired and has it's own resistor so if you used more ports on your accessory decoder you could have all three options.

BTW full marks to a German Amazon retailer called BW Bahn. The price for these including postage from Germany was a lot less than the RRP on the Maerklin web shop, I ordered them late afternoon on 30 December and they arrived morning of the 5th January! Can't ask for much better service than that. They were less than the customs limit so that helped with the speed of dispatch.

Anyway here they are in place on my indoor layout:

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