Is there any reason not to use a basic household toggle switch to turn the power on and off on your blocks? I have a ton of them from when I switched out all my switches to dimmers. I am going to try it out tonight but before I install it permanently on the layout I was wondering what the downfalls might be?
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Nope1 no reason not to .They're a little big but they certainly can handle the current and they're also reasonable cheap. In your case "free" We have about 20 or so on our layout. No problems and we only hook up the hot on our dcs layout.
Absolutely. They are inexpensive and easy to wire.
All of the wall toggle switches in our 1967 house have "silent" mercury switches, so that would be the only exception I can think of as they need to be mounted upright in the correct orientation in the wall to work.
Thanks guys!
When I went to command control I took out many blocks and a control panel. It was replaced with two plastic three switch boxes. The toggles are less expensive than spdt toggles and if there ever is an issue you can open the box from the front. A quick and easy way to wire. Also they are rated for 15 amp house current, more than enough for our needs.
Block Control alternate plan:
Since I use a very compact control panel along with MTH AIU ACC outputs for Block Control I am using miniature toggles which then activate high current capacity relays. This way the toggles and the relays used inside the AIU do not need to conduct the full track current.
My block relays are rated for about 20 amperes. Each relay requires about 0.1 amperes to activate
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