Elmer Lane 26 - Autoreverser test

 DB plugs onwards.

A return was made to the basement to see if I could get the remaining bits of the module any closer to finished.

The 'shadow' storage tracks out the back were laid in a fairly ugly manner. I used up some old code 80 points and track here, and lazily did not power the frogs (relying on the electrofrog wipers). Seems OK so far.  All rails were extended towards the 'north (the station) and a piece of PC board applied under them and wired up. I've also decided to extend the depot track at the 'back' (closest to the red fence) towards the camera so that it can be accessed from the rest of the layout. Previously it was only accessible from the turntable, which meant you couldn't store pairs of diesels there easily.  Its yet to ballasted at this end until the point is located just this side of the next module.

A Digitrax AR1 autoreverser was added onto the balloon loop to deal with the unfortunate physics of the "red wire becoming the black wire" as you go around the loop and back in the direction from whence you came. 

This works by having an isolated section in the loop that is powered from this device, which is (seemingly unsophisticatedly) a relay that works like a reversing switch.  As a train enters or departs this from either end of the isolated bit,  if a short is detected it tries flipping the polarity. This seems to work, and gets good reviews online. I picked it up when Acorn models in Christchurch had a sale on a while back. 

My original plan had a one metre length of flex track on the Hoki line (in front of the railcar shed) that would be powered by the autoreverser, but I recently decided to isolate the entire lump between the points at the far end of the storage sidings through to the points at what will be the Greymouth Station. This should be long enough to take the longest train (about three metres), and avoid the tiny probability that both ends of a one metre section could be bridged by metal wheels at the front and back of the train at once. Very unlikely given that most of my wheels are plastic anyway, but having said that, most of my vans have metal wheels, as does the Tranz, and that is longer than a metre. 

So, with that installed, it was time for a test. Out with the Multimeter and... shorts everywhere. I took off the remaining locos, checked for exposed wires touching underneath, isolated the autoreverser... Nope. 

Finally I decided I'd have to snip some wires to isolate a few segments to track down the error. Either on the new shadow tracks, which look fine, or on the roundhouse roads, which also look fine, or on the small bit of Greymouth platform/loop, which looked OK, but was now covered in light ballast, so I couldn't really tell. Snip. Action stations! I'll have to re-feed those two tracks later. I knew I should have been testing this all along....

Anyway, the module works, the turntable still works, and you can spin a loco or drive one onto the powered roundhouse tracks.