Swiss Chris Railways
CONTROL SYSTEMS
My first set was designed to run on 16V AC with the black switch controlling the direction and the red controlling accessory power. This was an interesting system in that if the track was dirty or the pick-
The Meteor set I had used the direction control switch to operate a horn. Direction changing was done using a rectifier supplied with power from the auxiliary socket. By the early 1960’s I was running Trix DC locos with a Triang mains transformer. I still had working AC locos so 1 pair of the 3 rail system was used for AC, the other pair for DC.
Bontal
Anything Else
Model Railways
Control Systems
When I put down my first permanent layout in 1966, the power was aided by Hammett and Morgan Transformers and a half wave rectified controller. This I used up til the mid 1980’s for the narrow gauge railway. The standard gauge was, at that time operated by the first DCC system, the Hornby Zero 1 with 3 slaves attached. As my collection grew to more than 16 locos, the limit for Zero 1 at that time, I returned to DC but with block control.
When I started building Bondale / Bontal, The layout grew more complex, and I ended up with 14 controllers of 1 sort or another. The wiring was horrendous with rotary switches to select which controller for an area. 1 control panel had over 500 soldered joints on it, it was that complex. In 2018, having retired, I invested in a Gaugemaster Prodigy 2 DCC system, which I use for train control. The sections are gradually having the rotary switches removed, and are now being connected to Digikrejs and Digitrax Occupancy sensors powered by a Digitrax DCS50 Zephyr with the turnouts and signals running on a separate bus powered by a Digitrax DCS52 Zephyr Express. The turnouts are controlled by DCC Concepts Dcd-
Links
JMRI can be found HERE.
Digitrax can be found HERE.
Digikreijs can be found HERE.
Gaugemaster can be found HERE.
The edit panel of Bondale in JMRI. This pabel covers the whole layout, but each area has it’s own panel which will be displayed and controlled on Raspberry Pis as well as from the master panel and PC. With JMRI, there is also the possibility of control using mobile phones and tablets.
