Hi again
For those of you who are Layout Construction list members, this will be deja
vu; please play along, or delete now, with my apologies.
For the others
I have a 12 track, 20' long double ended staging yard in the building
stages. Traffic out both ends of the yard run through the same interchange
junction with my focus railroad. Switches are C100 Peco Insulfrog. I am
putting optical detectors at each end of the clearance zone of each track,
as well as one centrally to indicate occupancy. I am now leaning towards
switching each yard track individually, with power to each track governed by
switch location. i.e. a maximum of two tracks can be powered, if the
ladders at each end select different tracks. cutting power to the tracks
individually
- reduces power consumption on the DCC boosters (not a big concern)
- isolates locos in the staging tracks so they're not continuously 'cooking'
when the layout is powered.
- helps to reduce derailments, as in order to have movement, you have to at
least know which unit you are operating, and which track it is on; it
doesn't guarantee you won't try to run out the wrong end of the yard, but
hey...
Control of the yard and it's block power doesn't particularly concern me
right now, as much as ensuring that I have flexibility down the road. If I
decide later that I should power the whole yard as a "block", it will be
easy to do; retroactively separating the feeders and running extra busses
will be much more difficult later.
