Tomix Signals

[Lawrence]

My usual plea for help guys :confused1:

 

I managed to pick up signals 5541 & 5542 on ebay, I know where I am putting them (ish) but am somewhat confused as to the opertaion of them. 

 

Am I right in thinking they are 12v dc operation? 

What point controllers do I need, I have noticed in the instructions (the only bit I understood!) 5531 & 5532 switches which presumeably the brown leads go into??  There is also mention of 5818 which seems to be kind of extension lead?

It is on dc operation so I will operate manually from the switches and can run 12 v round to each one, but I do need help on theses switches, and do I need 2 switches for the 5542?

 

This is all so confusing

[Lawrence]

Anyone?

 

:iamwithstupid:

[Zeppelin driver]

All I knows is what I sift from google translate on Tomix stuff.

Link off of Vol# and 'more information' for more info

 

http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ja&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tomytec.co.jp%2Ftomix%2Freport%2Fn%2Fnj_080.htm&act=url

 

Howard

[KenS]

My usual plea for help guys :confused1:

 

I managed to pick up signals 5541 & 5542 on ebay, I know where I am putting them (ish) but am somewhat confused as to the opertaion of them. 

 

Am I right in thinking they are 12v dc operation? 

What point controllers do I need, I have noticed in the instructions (the only bit I understood!) 5531 & 5532 switches which presumeably the brown leads go into??  There is also mention of 5818 which seems to be kind of extension lead?

It is on dc operation so I will operate manually from the switches and can run 12 v round to each one, but I do need help on theses switches, and do I need 2 switches for the 5542?

 

This is all so confusing

 

I don't know that the semaphores are identical to the color-light Tomix signals, and I can see one difference, but I expect they have similarities.

 

I have a couple of the color-light ones on my Urban Tram layout and a short write-up on my DC Signals page.  The ones I have lack the gray wire shown on the 5542, and the Hobby Search (HS) write-up says something about a knob, so I'm guessing there's some manual control beyond the switch visible on the side of the base, which uses the gray wire. Tomytec has a write-up that shows a pair of switches being used in conjunction with it, but no wiring diagram and I couldn't make sense of the translated Japanese. (oh, that's the same one Zepplin Driver linked).

 

So my guess is yes, you need two of some kind of switch on the gray wire, and the brown provides power for lighting separate from that. If I'm reading HS right, the 5542 uses two of the N-S switches (the 5531)  and the 5541 uses a single N switch (the 5533). I don't think the "N-W" (5532) is used, but I could be wrong.

 

The brown wire with black plugs is definitely 12 V DC.  I suspect the gray wire is as well.

 

Mine don't actually have anything to do with switches. They sense track polarity to determine direction (so you can't use them on DCC), and have a physical switch on the base tripped by the wheel of a passing train.  This starts a timer to cycle them through the different colors. And on a loop, the timer interval can apparently "learn" how long it takes a train to go around, and change the cycle interval (or maybe it's just sensing track voltage and guessing).

 

There's some ability to change their behavior (and I think it's more than just how quickly they cycle through the states), but I couldn't figure out that part of the instructions and never got around to working on it more.

 

The 5518 appears to be a "splitter", so you can branch the power to multiple devices without having to string them in a chain.  I think this is used in part to power the lights on the mast, based on what I can make out from the HS write-up. Maybe that's all the brown wire does on these. The 5810 is, I believe, a 1m extension cord, but I don't have one to be sure of that.

 

The 5541 is a Station Exit signal, so it would go at the departure end of a platform or just beyond it, to signal the train it was clear to depart.  The 5542 is the opposite, a Station Entry signal, placed either at the end of the platform or outside it, signaling that it's clear to enter the station.

[Lawrence]

Thanks for the replies, I will get a couple of the Tomix switches and figure the power routing to them.  The single signal has two small metal strips in the pack, any idea what these are for?

Edited March 9, 2013 by Lawrence