If you saw my post of December 22 of last year, you saw the schematics and plans for a major revamp of the controls of my old-school Model Motoring track. Well, I’m now proud to present the finished product!
A quick review of the plan:
- Make both lanes capable of being run with either the old-school “cruise control” terminals or the Parma triggers with the flip of a switch
- Be able to run one lane with the cruise control terminal and the other with the trigger if so desired
- To make it possible to reverse the polarity of each track and run it in either direction using either the cruise terminals or the triggers
Mission accomplished, thanks to my buddy Dale who is a professional electrician. With his guidance I was able to make everything I wanted happen! It took an entire weekend (but of course we took beer and bullshitting breaks) and although I used 4 full spools of wire and over 40 spade connectors, the whole project went remarkably well, which just goes to show there’s no substitute for planning!
Check out the results and tell me what you think!
So its not perfect; as I said in the video above I need to clean up and hide some of the wiring, and the Parma triggers I chose to use are fine for the older cars but they don’t have enough resistance for the higher performance JL and T-Dash cars, so I’m going to have to try to obtain another set of controllers with a higher resistance coil, hopefully something around 120 ohms, if I can find them (which so far I have been unable to!) But even if it still needs a little work, this is a pretty fun setup! Hours more racing fun lie ahead!
What can I say but BRAVO! I think this is truly amazing and I love how you did this with all the different driving options with cruising, racing, reverse…etc. This was a very smart move and great idea to allow for all kinds of different racing depending on the mood. The fact that you guys planned all is out is amazing and you have learned tons! I wish I had this top of options for my trains. You’ve inspired me now that I’m back working on my layout. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you pull out of your hat next!