Monk Subdivision: Wiring the Swing Gate

Wiring isn’t my cup of tea, but I must admit I had to step up my game a little bit over the last few months. At least, enough to barely understand what I’m doing.

One of the challenges on Monk is the lift gate. Not only it must be electrified, but current must be cut off on each side of it to prevent a train running over the gap accidentally. While there are many approaches to do that, I had a few DCC Concepts Legacy Connectors on hands. They are metal alignment dowels with spring load gold plated plungers that ensure electric contact when they met. They use a male-female arrangement. I thought they could be really useful because the alignment property would be desired at the open end of the gate where they can be a 1mm tolerance, enough to cause issues and derailment.

My concept is simple: Each track on both sides of the gate is insulated from the rest of the layout. I selected a minimal length of 2 feet, but on the right side, it’s about 3 feet long. That should be enough to take care of any locomotive running full speed with inertia.

Connectors on the hinge side

I run a flexible bus wire to the lift gate on the hinge side. This bus then split in three feeders. One to the hinge sides, one to the opposite side and one to the bridge track itself. Each of them is soldered to a male Legacy Connector that mates with a female connector located into the fascia or on top of it, depending on the geometry. The lift gate thus acts like a switch.

Connector on the opposite side

When closed down, both approach tracks on each side of the lift gate are alive and trains can run over the bride. If opened up, electric current never reaches these tracks and trains are safe from taking the proverbial plunge to the concrete floor. This is a fail safe and low tech strategy I like.

Connector installed on the opposite side benchwork

As you may have noticed, the bridge track always stays electrified with this design, but it isn’t an issue. Nobody will open the lift gate with a train on it… at least, I hope so!

Scenery will take care of these wires in the future

The DCC Concept Legacy Connectors aren’t probably the first choice for that kind of installation, but they are easy to install and helps with alignment. We shall see if they are able to survive constant handling.