Fitting Point Motors

Although Waddon was started in my living room it was moved to my mums garage for a couple of  months while I built the back of the circuit containing the fiddle yard. This would have been very expensive, eight roads of  twelve feet with twelve points and motors except for the fact that it was nearly all  reclaimed from a long since dismantled loft layout. A couple of points failed muster and I was short of one point motor but apart from that I had all I needed to complete the task.

The motors at the back are the Peco type, which work fine but I don't like the big hole you have to cut under the points if you are going to ballast the track. They are also fiddly to fit, particularly getting the tie bar though the points. After much cursing and swearing I found the solution was to solder a small wire to the end of the point motor rod and then feed this through the hole in the tie bar. You could then concentrate on getting the metal lugs to locate knowing the bar was held in position.

The point motors at the front are the Seep type. These seem to work very well and you only have to drill a tiny series of holes and join them up with a file to enable the rod can pass back and forth. A lot of people find them fiddly to fix in place as there are just two small screw holes in the circuit board mounting the motor. My solution, was to place pieces of card between the blades on each side of the point to centre it.


Then go under the board and push the long rod of the motor through the tie bar, lining the motor up with the direction of the slot cut for the movement of the rod. Then making sure the rod was in the centre of the motor I fixed it in place with a hot glue gun. This seems to have worked very well and all the motors are still in place and working after two years in storage. Only one didn't work properly when fitted as it was out of alignment with the movement of the point. However, it was just a matter of cutting free with a craft knife and gluing it back in place with the correct alignment.

As the layout is DCC the control board is just for points and I opted for 'push to make' buttons for the fiddle yard and probe and stud for the station area. The push buttons change the points at both ends of the fiddle yard, while the prob allows route setting with just the paired run around points interlocked. There are two capacitor units, one or the front of the layout and one for the back, both powered by a basic Hornby controller.