Powering Tomix fine track

[rosskin92]

Hello all,

 

Im looking at purchasing some mini rail track, but Im confused about how to power and control it on a budget.

 

Any ideas?

[brill27mcb]

Simple. You power it by sliding a Tomix "DC Feeder" two-pronged cable under the center of just about any ballasted track piece, or by snapping a different track feeder cable to the underside of just about any slab track or street (tram) track piece. There is no specific "terminal track" in the Tomix system. Then you connect the other end of the DC Feeder cable to a power pack. If it is a Tomix power supply with "Neo" connectors, it just plugs in. Otherwise, you could cut the connector off that end of the cable, separate and strip the two wire ends, and fasten them to screw terminals or whatever your power pack has.

 

If you are looking at how to create power blocks and other fancier "control," that is a different discussion. However, with Tomix, all turnouts/points are now fully power-routing, meaning when the turnout is thrown to one route, the power is cut off to both rails of the other route. This unique feature can eliminate the need for many on/off switches to control power to sidings, passing tracks, and so on.

 

As an example. this past weekend we set up and ran a temporary single-track oval with two double-ended passing sidings ("passing loops"). We ran two trams, going in opposite directions on this single-track oval. They would arrive at one passing siding area and stop by themselves. Then, after both had arrived, we could release the two trams past each other by reversing the power supply's polarity switch and then throwing both turnouts. When the trams got halfway around the oval, and arrived and stopped at the other passing siding area, the same process is followed. All of this was accomplished with just the following: two DC Feeder cables to the track, a Tomix branching "Y" cable (to connect both feeder cables to the power supply's one socket), four electric turnouts, each pair being controlled by one 2-turnout control toggle, and four insulating rail joiners. With the "Neo" system, it was all "plug and play."

 

Rich K.

Edited October 22, 2013 by brill27mcb