After a long hiatus, I am finally building an 027 door layout out of track I’ve accumulated over the years for my twin boys. I am planning on a long spur in the center of layout to park trains or run a reversing motorized unit. My question is how should I place insulating pins between the 1022 switches to isolate the center branch from the main loop? Center rail and side rails? My idea is to add an extra lock on to this spur with a switch wired to the center rail feed to cut it in or out as necessary. I am using the 1022s simply because they are all I have and I am trying to keep things under budget. I am using an LW to power the tracks and an R to power lights and accessories.
Replies sorted oldest to newest
Center rail only if you really need to. The 1022 switches shut off power automatically to the route not selected.
Sorry for the delay Rob! Thank you so much for that information, and yesterday I set up the switches as you suggested. Sure enough, they worked as designed. Unfortunately, I am probably going to pull most of them (save for maybe one or two) off of the layout. My small 027 steamers tend to jump off of them a derail if the speed isn’t right, and when I place them together the locomotive fails to go through them completely. So I will probably eliminate sidings all together and place my operating tracks and accessories (397 coal loader and milk platform) along the mainline, with a separate trolley line through the center.
Attachments
Try rearranging your turnouts on the mainline like the attach pic shows and see if you still get derails. I have used the 1022's with no issues, but I do try to avoid the S curve problems.
Attachments
Great suggestion! I’ll give that arrangement a try next. Swapping out one turnout fixed the jumping issue but I’m still having the S turn problem, so this will help.