Storage Tracks...More Electronic Fun on the Redlock Railroad

lt's coming on 2 years now since the track plan went from a vision, to paper, and then into reality. I spent considerable time envisioning what my first layout would look like, how it would be built, and what it would be like finally running the   trains. After many hours of enjoyable effort, running the trains became a reality. Scenery began to sprout up and mountains took shape.  Operating multiple  trains with my grandsons or friends was fun and a challenge. It became clear though,that in all my pre-construction dreaming I had overlooked an important element in track planning....Staging and  storage tracks. The problem became that I would make up long trains to run and if I wanted to park them somewhere, I'd have to leave them on passing sidings making it difficult to run other consists. After a careful inventory of available real estate I realized that an addition to the existing layout would be required to add the storage tracks I had in mind.

My layout is 16 feet long with a small "L" at one end to accommodate a hidden helix, and a larger one that is about 60 inches wide at the other end. The entire layout is built on wheels so that it can be moved away from the garage wall in order to work the other side comfortably rather than having to lean over the layout. I decided to add an additional 8" section around the "L. Although not to scale by any means, here is a picture of the basic layout shape with the red dashed lines defining the increased real estate.  Too bad it's not this easy to add real estate in your real life.

I added three storage tracks(see the picture at the end) that will be hidden. They connect to the mainline on  the front side of the layout and then re-connect on backside.The added real estate above the storage tracks will provide areas for more scenery and such.

The storage tracks are controlled by a Diode Matrix circuit and a Slow Motion or Stall Motor Driver circuit that I got off of Rob Paisley's excellent website: Model Railroad & Misc. Electronics . There are many projects related to Model Railroading on his site. I love to tinker and this site gets you started if you at all inclined to experiment with electronic controls. I used the circuit to the right for my diode matrix . It's a bit hard to see here but if you go to the site there are a lot of cool circuits that you might be able to use. It uses a 2 pole six position rotary switch to control the various routes. The matrix, when coupled with the  Stall Motor Driver , makes controlling routes for the trains in the storage areas a snap. I purchase the pre-printed circuit board for the Stall Motor Driver but it is simple enough to create your own. Parts for the circuits were easy to get thru www.digikey.com .

Once the new track was laid, the turnouts and Tortoises in place, and the matrix and driver circuits completed, it was time for a test drive. Surprisingly, for me, all worked as planned.

Because the storage tracks are to be hidden, one last step was to install some sort of detection circuitry. I had previously used NCE BD-20's for block occupancy detection and signaling so I searched the internet for the best price and found some at the Accu-lites website for a great price. Rob Paisley's site, mentioned above, has block detection circuits available but after calculating the price for parts and the time to make up the circuits the BD-20's were a better deal.

Here is a picture of the completed circuits:

Next is a picture of the Control Panel for the Storage Tracks:

The green LED's at the bottom indicate the Route selected and the 3 red LED's (they don't look red in the photo) indicate track occupancy. In this case, all the tracks are occupied. There was no need to show the other sets of turnouts or the complete routes as the Route Selector controls the remaining 3 turnouts as they rejoin the main line.  You may also notice that below the control panel, the three onboard LED's are lit on the BD-20's.

And finally, here is a here is a picture of the added real estate with the three storage tracks installed. The fascia on the perimeter and the extruded foam to cover  the storage area as well as other landscaping are next to be  installed.

In a previous  blog entry I described using mini security cameras for hidden areas on my layout. I will add 2 more cameras in the hidden Storage Track area.

That's about all for now on the Redlock Railroad. If anyone wants further details I'd be happy to pass along what I've learned.

J.