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100 Posts
Hi Bill,
My track build has stalled for quite some time now. Now that my son is at school, I find that he is much more interested in spending time with me in the weekends, so I feel guilty disappearing into the garage to work on the track.
That said, there's lots of construction going on in my head, so to speak. I too have been thinking of ways to make a track easily switchable between digital and analog, and here's what I've been thinking.
On the underside of the base board, close to the egde (so the base unit can stick out the side) will be two "blocks" that the ends of the base unit track can sit between. One end is fixed and the other end will be spring loaded or held in place with a wingnut (not sure of the best arrangement yet). The "blocks" will grip the track piece, and provide an electrical connection to power the track. That way I can "borrow" the digital power base from my son's scaley set without altering it in any way, and swap back to an analog one (for practising on my own). The fixed end could even be one end of a piece of sport track screwed to the bottom of the MDF.
If that description is hard to follow, here's a (very) quick diagram. Drawing the diagram made me think a pivoting end bracket could provide a quick, easy option to attach the power base.
Side and top view
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Of course, if you don't need to keep the powerbases intact you could separate them from the track and just plug in whichever one you wish to use.
My track is two lanes with a home made equivalent of a SLC. That way it can be a simple two lane circuit or (by switching the "lane changers") a two lap, single lane. By allowing the digital powerbase to be used I can race two cars on the two lap single lane circuit (first car to catch up to the other wins!!!!).
Oops. It just occurred to me (looking at Gundam2000's pics) that if you're using a 6 car PB, that having the power base track section under the MDF won't allow the cars to pass over the sensors. I've only got the 4 car PB, so it doesn't matter to me. Hmmm, I wonder how far away from the cars the sensors still work? Even if the powerbase track was held directly under the MDF and holes were drilled to let the sensors see the cars, would the distance be too great? It would also mean you'd have to route your track very close to the edge of the MDF to be able to use the powerbase like that.
Oh well. It was a good idea for my purpose. Now that I've explained it, it's probably not an appropriate solution to your "problem". Are you going to be using a 6 car or 4 car PB?
My track build has stalled for quite some time now. Now that my son is at school, I find that he is much more interested in spending time with me in the weekends, so I feel guilty disappearing into the garage to work on the track.
That said, there's lots of construction going on in my head, so to speak. I too have been thinking of ways to make a track easily switchable between digital and analog, and here's what I've been thinking.
On the underside of the base board, close to the egde (so the base unit can stick out the side) will be two "blocks" that the ends of the base unit track can sit between. One end is fixed and the other end will be spring loaded or held in place with a wingnut (not sure of the best arrangement yet). The "blocks" will grip the track piece, and provide an electrical connection to power the track. That way I can "borrow" the digital power base from my son's scaley set without altering it in any way, and swap back to an analog one (for practising on my own). The fixed end could even be one end of a piece of sport track screwed to the bottom of the MDF.
If that description is hard to follow, here's a (very) quick diagram. Drawing the diagram made me think a pivoting end bracket could provide a quick, easy option to attach the power base.
Side and top view
Of course, if you don't need to keep the powerbases intact you could separate them from the track and just plug in whichever one you wish to use.
My track is two lanes with a home made equivalent of a SLC. That way it can be a simple two lane circuit or (by switching the "lane changers") a two lap, single lane. By allowing the digital powerbase to be used I can race two cars on the two lap single lane circuit (first car to catch up to the other wins!!!!).
Oops. It just occurred to me (looking at Gundam2000's pics) that if you're using a 6 car PB, that having the power base track section under the MDF won't allow the cars to pass over the sensors. I've only got the 4 car PB, so it doesn't matter to me. Hmmm, I wonder how far away from the cars the sensors still work? Even if the powerbase track was held directly under the MDF and holes were drilled to let the sensors see the cars, would the distance be too great? It would also mean you'd have to route your track very close to the edge of the MDF to be able to use the powerbase like that.
Oh well. It was a good idea for my purpose. Now that I've explained it, it's probably not an appropriate solution to your "problem". Are you going to be using a 6 car or 4 car PB?
