The Matrix

I'm not the only one who has been given a headache by this layout in recent weeks.

This time it's been Himself's turn.

He's been trying to remember how he made the point routing system for the fiddle yards on Dduallt more than 20 years ago.

Eventually he managed to find two Railway Modeller articles on a 'Push Button Routing System' which were in the October and November 1974 editions and the spidery circuit diagrams that he used.

Nothing but cutting edge technology on this layout!

If you're looking to make these for yourself the main components are some copper clad strip board and diodes.

He tells me there's 1 board for the 6 routes and the other for the output to the 5 point motors (2 coils each)

The diodes are wired between them to form a matrix logic system which fires the points for a set route.

Here is one of the units made up.

The red wires are from the rotary switch for the 6 roads, the yellow and white go to the point coils.

What they will control is this:

A couple of the points will have have to be switch operated - the furthest kick-back siding point and the loco release points at the ends of the sidings.

Now he's got to finish wiring it all up and see if it works!