The automatic signaling system aka Colour Light Staff (in tramway circles).
Here is the board and set up for the simple version that controls one section of single track. A mate of mine designed this and to his great credit its simple and it works.
With a little bit of lateral thought with only 2 of these I could control the entire system by ?leapfrogging? the sectors each controls, there could be any number of switches and within reason any number of sections could be controlled.
Basically what happens is when the units are powered up they are all at green, a tram (for the purposes of the exercise lets say No1) equipped with a magnet passes over one of the ?Hold? reed switches and that turns off the power (to the track) in the sector its protecting the staff goes to red. If another tram approaches the protected section it stops at the red light and waits until No1 has cleared the single track, No 1 then passes over the release switch, turns the staff to green and powers the track allowing the stopped tram to move off. Simplicity itself! I understand the designer will soon have kits on eBay, but he has asked that his contact details are kept a closely guarded secret?..
This will make the whole thing semi automatic and prevent collisions when motormen are not paying attention, fully manual operation will be available by bypassing the power switching and allow Motormen to just use the colour light staff adding lots more fun and realism.
Other modules will be added if needed which will allow trams to follow each other and stop behind if there is a tram stopped in front. But let me get the simple version sorted first the other boards have transistors on them or for those unfamiliar with such, these are little black things with 3 wires coming out of them?.
The boards will be dipped in liquid tape for weather proofing purposes and will be out of sight under the layout.
The placement of the reed switches is critical and this also has to be completed and the track ?glitch? free before and road works or overhead can be started. Soooooooooo I guess this is the next step??
Here is the board and set up for the simple version that controls one section of single track. A mate of mine designed this and to his great credit its simple and it works.
With a little bit of lateral thought with only 2 of these I could control the entire system by ?leapfrogging? the sectors each controls, there could be any number of switches and within reason any number of sections could be controlled.
Basically what happens is when the units are powered up they are all at green, a tram (for the purposes of the exercise lets say No1) equipped with a magnet passes over one of the ?Hold? reed switches and that turns off the power (to the track) in the sector its protecting the staff goes to red. If another tram approaches the protected section it stops at the red light and waits until No1 has cleared the single track, No 1 then passes over the release switch, turns the staff to green and powers the track allowing the stopped tram to move off. Simplicity itself! I understand the designer will soon have kits on eBay, but he has asked that his contact details are kept a closely guarded secret?..
This will make the whole thing semi automatic and prevent collisions when motormen are not paying attention, fully manual operation will be available by bypassing the power switching and allow Motormen to just use the colour light staff adding lots more fun and realism.
Other modules will be added if needed which will allow trams to follow each other and stop behind if there is a tram stopped in front. But let me get the simple version sorted first the other boards have transistors on them or for those unfamiliar with such, these are little black things with 3 wires coming out of them?.
The boards will be dipped in liquid tape for weather proofing purposes and will be out of sight under the layout.
The placement of the reed switches is critical and this also has to be completed and the track ?glitch? free before and road works or overhead can be started. Soooooooooo I guess this is the next step??
