@deletedmember Hi Steve! Not sure if I’m going to be able to explain this clearly, but here goes. I’ve split #marshallsparcels into 5 sections. Each of the 5 sections have dropper wires fitted. The black rails are all connected with conductive fishplates with a constant feed. The red rails split the 5 sections with insulated fishplates. This made wiring easier. Power to the layout comes in from the appropriate controller to a 6A pluggable block connector. This makes swapping controllers easy. I have the same setup on my main layout so can swap controllers between that and #marshallsparcels easily. The droppers from the black rails are all fed from Choc Block 1 (CB1). The red wire from the controller feeds into CB1 with various feeds taken off it. CB1 then feeds a constant supply to section #5. This is effectively the master section as all locomotive movements are through this. In Digital Control, all sections need power, so the feed F1 takes power to a 6A female pluggable block connector with 4 ports. Each of the 4 ports are connected to the next with bus wire, sharing the power between the 4. This then plugs into a 6A male pluggable connector feeding power to sections the four outer sections on the layout For Analogue Control, the 4 outer sections need to be isolated. If I was using points, the points act as switches. However, the double slip doesn’t do this, so makes analogue wiring trickier! (Ironically, if I was using points, it would make the digital wiring trickier! Ho hum!) I am operating the double slip with DCC Concepts IP Analogue point motors (PM1 and PM2). These allow you to switch polarity of a frog through the operation of the point motor. You can also use this function as a switch to power different sections of track (anyway, that’s the plan!). To do this, feed F2 takes power to the two point motors. The point motors then feed to either section #1 or #2 dependent on the position of PM2 and to section #3 or #4 dependent on PM1. Fed through a second 6A pluggable female block connector to the male connector that supplies the 4 outer sections. Makes swapping between Digital and Analogue Control simple with just one pluggable connector on the layout. I’ve tested the Digital Control which works nicely. I’ve still to wire up the switches for the point motors to test Analogue Control but I’m confident it will work. Wiring diagram attached and I’ll post some more in the comments. Cheers, Ross.

Posted by East Coast DCC at 2022-02-03 19:26:59 UTC