Power and control

Wire Glue is an electrically conductive glue/paint which has many uses in the hobby world.  It is ideal for both AC and DC circuits that carry low voltage, such as the ones used on model railways. One example I can think of is joining wires and...

An SPST switch is a simple on/off switch. SPST stands for Single Pole Single Throw and it is the most basic of switches controlling a single piece of equipment from a single power supply.In a model railway scenario, this switch is used to...

A DPDT (Double Pole Double Throw) switch allows two completely separate circuits to be controlled by just one switch. They can be used as on/off or on/on switches.There are many situations on a model railway layout where a DPDT switch can be...

When turnouts are operated by point motors, they require the same forces applied to them as they would do operated by hand, to move the point blades force needs to be applied, but the rest of the time no force is required and the blades sit quite...

There are different types of electric motors, the type that most modellers are accustomed to is the one that makes their engines move. This type of motor is known as a solenoid motor. It is a crude and basic motor that works by passing a current...

To understand what a DCC decoder does, we must first take a look at how DC and DCC work.DC stands for Direct Current, this is the way modellers have been controlling their model railways for years. You have a controller which sends electric to...

One of the jobs of a DCC decoder is to control pretty much everything that your model locomotive does, from starting and stopping to sound and lighting, the decoder gives the orders and distributes the power within the model to all the components...

One of the many advantages of using DCC is that compliant models are capable of operating auxiliary functions such as horns, lights, fans, smoke and realistic sounds. The amount of additional functions that you can add to a model depends on how...

RailCom is a system developed by Lenz that allows two-way communication between a DCC controller and a decoder. The early RailCom system was limited to use with Marklin's MFX standard and has been largely replaced by RailComPlus which is more...

When choosing a decoder for your model, it can be expected that making your model move is something that all decoders will do as a minimum. In addition to this, all but the most basic of decoders will offer a certain amount of additional...

There are times when you may want to operate more than one set of points using just one switch, examples of locations where this could be an advantage include, crossovers, catch points and when a dedicated route is required, this is not a problem...

You can use reed switches on your model railway when you want an action to be triggered by a train passing over a particular section of track. Reed switches work in a very basic way, they have two fine strips of metal placed slightly apart acting...