Llanastr

[dgp1957]

Can anyone explain how the track changing selector method is operated on Llanastr ?

David

[Mike Garwood]

Having operated Llanastr (very badly!), the yard is permanently live. The layout is DCC controlled. But Rod will confirm this for you.

Mike

[dgp1957]

Thanks Mike, it was how the fiddle yard worked, just my cack handed way of saying it

[newport_rod]

Hello David,
The sector plate rotates around a bolt, which is marked with a cross on the plan that you can see here [url]http://www.scalefour.org/shows/S4SW2010/llanastr.html[/url] or in Model Railway Journal No 4.

The spacing between each track is the same so that if one track is aligned then all the other tracks are aligned too. Alignment is done be eye. When I built the layout I was in my twenties and aligning the sector plate by eye unaided rarely seemed to cause a problem but now, almost thirty years later, the eyes are weaker so the process has been assisted by the introduction of a small hand-held mirror (thanks Bernie!) – we hold the mirror at 45º to the rails so that with the mirror you’re looking along the rail.

Electrically the layout was designed for DC and power was distributed to the four roads of the sector plate via a rotary switch such that only one road was electrically live at any time. As Mike mentioned we now use DCC so to allow all the sector plate to be live simultaneously I have now fitted a four-pole slide switch that by-passes the rotary switch (and allows us to revert to DC when required).

I hope this makes sense but please ask if I can help further.

Cheers, Rod

[dgp1957]

Thanks