Very productive Saturday! I’ve started adding the track feeders, switch machines and block detectors to the first staging yard board. So far I have added the feeders for the detected blocks (orange for the Freight yard, and yellow for the Metra yard), installed two Digitrax BDL168 block detectors (one for each yard) as well as a DCC Specialities PSX-2 circuit breaker (1 power district for each yard).
As you can see I have used Seep solenoid switch machines – this is purely because I already have these and I have a Signatrak DAC20 accessory decoder already programmed up for these from my previous layout – plus they are reliable, so I might as well continue to use them. For the rest of the turnouts on my layout I’ll be using a combination of Tortoise, Cobalt and Servo switch motors. More on these later.
As you can see from this photo, I have decided to go with the Acculite BDL168 Breakout Boards, to make it quicker and easier to wire up the BDL168’s, no soldering needed! I’ll be adding the rest of the wiring to these tomorrow.
Here is board 1 of the two board lower staging yard, almost complete! I’ll be adding the common rail wiring tomorrow, as well as the track bus and LocoNet cables, then soldering the feeders to the rails. Once done, it will be ready for testing…hopefully tomorrow afternoon!
Now just to catch up on my video updates and get those uploaded to my BNSF Chicago Sub YouTube channel