For the last few weeks I've been working on a window display layout for my local hobby shop,
Railway City Hobbies.
A local modeler who had remarkable talents in kitbashing industrial structures passed away and his daughter wished for an ongoing legacy of his skills. So a few of his structures were loaned so that they could be on display, (I'll be showing photos at a later date).
We determined which structures could be incorporated into the space and a track plan was figured out.
A simple switchback with 3 turnouts which would feature a short train and a couple of cars shuttling back and forth. The key to this was finding a control system to make this work.
Cue those fine folks at Iowa Scale Engineering and their Motorman control system. A bit of electronic wizardry that does exactly what we require for either DC or DCC equipped locomotives.
The auto-reverse is triggered by an under the track photo receptor, Trainspotter, which we also used to control the turnout motors, MP1.
All in all a rather simple setup
I'd post a video, but it exceeds the file size allowed, take my word for it, the layout works exactly as desired
Now I can work on ground cover and other such things another couple of weeks it'll be in the store window
