Thursday, July 20, 2023

Changes for the Western Pacific staging yard

The west end Western Pacific staging yard had been in limited operation as being just a return loop since March.  I had replaced the wye control function of the non-operating DS64 with my own circuit but still could not use 3 of the 4 tracks.  Recently I built and installed the circuit to control the yard ladder.



With the new controls, the control panel also got some changes.  In the old scheme the track selected LEDs used a common return.  With this new scheme each LED is connected to its own track on both rails so additional connections were needed.  Removing the unused occupied LEDs freed up those connections in the control panel.

As I always run the trains in the same direction in the staging yard, I replaced the toggle switches which had controlled both the yard ladder and wye turnout with push buttons.  Then push buttons were added for independent control of the wye.  Those changes are pointed out in blue in the photo below.












So now this staging yard works the same way as the lower level staging yard but without the automatic function.

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