More Train Control

 

 In this post, I talked about the issues I was having getting the next build working.  I finally pulled the one installed.  I had replaced the 10L series with a 10ohm SMT0805.  While an SMT0805 will handle more power than an SMT0603, still not good.  So I replaced the 10ohm with the same parallel combination of 120 ohms to get it to 60 ohms.  

As the above picture shows, I finally finished with the way too many SOT23 I had to put down.  Also DigiKey had 6000+ of the Transceiver module, so I bought some to populate these boards.  The plugin module was a nice stop gap, but with it perpendicular to the board, I was always afraid that it would get damaged pushing a box underneath the layout.

All of this started with one signal that I could hear activating, but it would not move the signal arm.  This was an old style signal that I had buried in the layout as show here.

 

During the move, the black metal tab dislodged from the plastic plunger.  The plunger moves back and forth inside the solenoid plastic form.  You can see the tab better in this picture.  Now I have to replace the heavy paper that covered the solenoid housing.

 

 

 And finally this what one controller installed looks like.  Still a rats nest.