Revising Turnout Controls

The three push buttons on the fascia control the position of the stub turnout on the railroad. 

I like the manual control of turnouts. It fits with my era and it simplifies the wiring considerably. Every turnout on the railroad is controlled by a Blue Point controller with a manual push-pull (except for the staging yards and the interlocking plant). I had previously modified two of the Blue Points to work with my two three-way stub switches at Copperopolis and Farmington. The one at Copperopolis has always worked fine but, for the last few months, the Farmington turnout has not worked well. I have tried several times to readjust things but could not make the "fix" work. My operators were getting perturbed as Farmington can be a busy place.I finally had to find a permanent fix.
    My solution to the problem was to remove the Blue Point and replace it with a Tam Valley Depot (www.tamvalleydepot.com) Dual 3-way servo decoder. This device is designed to work with either a 3-way turnout or a 3-position semaphore. You can easily adjust the position of the points (or blade) and even adjust the speed of the throw. In the case of a semaphore, the unit can be programmed to put a "bounce" as the blade changes position.

The servo motor controlling the turnout is at the upper

right of the photo while the control board is at the lower

left. Using servos to control turnouts is very simple and

easy to install.

     The installation was a two-man job with one person under the layout adjusting the track position and another on the top telling when the tracks were aligned. My friend, Mark Davidson came over and, between us, we managed to get everything adjusted. I am very happy with the results and, now, you only have to push one of three buttons to align the turnout.
     By the way, each of these controllers can handle two turnouts/semaphores. For those interested, I used another Tam Valley Depot device, their Dual Frog Juicer. It handles both frogs in the turnout routing power accordingly.