I still haven’t found a way that makes me happy to install the mini switches that control the turnouts. The two ways I have looked at so far, see picture, have both advantages and drawbacks. The recessed switch housing takes up a lot of room on the fascia and the extended switch cover sticks out too far. Still looking.
I’m working on designing a 10″ fascia around the layout, with room for turnout control switches with LED lights, and that can be hinged to lay flat for working on the wiring. I’m also wiring in Tortoise switch machines on the main line.
Older turnouts built for DC power are not friendly with Digital Command Control and can cause power shorts. By reworking them to power the switch points to be consistent with the stock rails it makes them friendly with DCC power. The upper switch has been converted and the lower switch is still stock.
PCRy engines
A few of the engines I have been converting to Digital Command Control (DCC). I am now starting to add more track to the layout to get the main line finished.
I recently set out to convert an Athearn/Digitrax digital PC board from using light bulbs to powering LEDs. The process involves removing the eight limiting diodes and increasing the two series resistors from 150 to 1K ohms. Since I could find no schematic of the PC board I drew a circuit representation on my CAD program to aid in identifying what circuits to modify. The project has proven to be a great success.