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Controlling Turnouts
Bernard is new to the hobby and is hoping an experienced model railroader can give him some advice:
“I am new to trains. I have built many HO structures, have a good DCC system, and I am starting to plan my layout. This is not any easy thing. I am confused about turnouts since I have different opinions from different sources. Should I control the switches from the DCC, or should I have a separate electrical line to control the switches? One vendor told me that many have tried to use DCC to control switches, but change back to separate switching to control them. Since I will soon have to plan my infrastructure I could use some help.”
Add your suggestions to help Bernard below.
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I would use separate power supplies to power the turnouts and the rails. reason is if the track shorts out the switches go down too, so you can’t get you rolling stock off the track cause you cant throw the switch.Another more important reason is that if you have a short where is it?—-is it the switches or the track. by placing these things on a separate circuit you cut you trouble shooting time in half.