Turnout signal

[gouda]

Does any company make or has anyone seen a way of making a signal light that shows when a turnout is one way or the other? By that I mean some sort of visible LED or small light mounted near the turnout that glows red when the turnout is one way and green the other. Or something like that. I have a Kato Unitrack layout with MRC DCC. I have looked on line at numerous places, but have not found anything.

Thanks

 

[notabob]

NCE makes the Switch-Kat stationary decoder that will control your Kato switch machines and at the same time has signal outputs. That's probably the easiest way to accomplish what you're looking to do with Unitrack. If you have a lot of turnouts you want to do this for, the whole thing can get pricy at extra $20/turnout, but on the positive side you get DCC control for your turnouts AND signaling.

 

[Iron Horseman]

Does any company make or has anyone seen a way of making a signal light that shows when a turnout is one way or the other? By that I mean some sort of visible LED or small light mounted near the turnout that glows red when the turnout is one way and green the other. Or something like that. I have a Kato Unitrack layout with MRC DCC. I have looked on line at numerous places, but have not found anything.

Oh wow. there are more ways to do this than one can shake a stick at. The options might be limited down by the current method you use to change the direction of the turnout. do you currently change the turnouts? Unfortunately I am not familiar with Kato Unitrack. Do they have hot frogs? I would guess not which eliminates the simplest solution.

Most often one would tap into the existing turnout controller to add the signalling. For example Tortoise turnout motors have a couple sets of contacts that can be used. With other brands of stall motors one can simply put a couple LEDs in series with the turnout motor.
For twin coil machines one has to add another set of contacts or add a relay circuit that triggers with the activation of the coil.

 

[notabob]

Most often one would tap into the existing turnout controller to add the signalling. For example Tortoise turnout motors have a couple sets of contacts that can be used. With other brands of stall motors one can simply put a couple LEDs in series with the turnout motor.
For twin coil machines one has to add another set of contacts or add a relay circuit that triggers with the activation of the coil.

Unitrack turnouts are a little tricky - they are built to work with their own proprietary switch machines that install into the plastic roadbed which are neither stall or twin-coil, but rather a split coil design. While it may be possible to rig a unitrack turnout with an under-layout switch (stall or twin-coil) and feed signaling off of that - the kato switch machine with a decoder is probably the easiest way to do it, though it may not be the cheapest. There may be vendors other than NCE that build switch decoders for Kato switch machines as well, but they're the only one I'm aware of who has signal outputs right on the board.

 

[CSX Robert]

I have come up with a couple of circutis that will indicate the direction the turnout is thrown. On #6 turnouts, you would have to open the bottom of the turnout to get electrical access to the frog.

The first one is for DCC use only:

The second one is a little more complicated, but will work on both DCC and DC, although with DC the brightness of the LEDs will vary according to the throttle setting:

These circuits are small enough to fit in the roadbed of the #6 turnouts. If you are interested, I have pictures of the inside of a #6 turnout that I have added this circuit to.