C Track Tip: Point Motor Imitations
The Märklin point mechanism for the C track has some nice accessories in the bag that comes with it. I use them to indicate digital and remote controlled points from the manually controlled points.
The Prototype
The point motor imitations seem to be a model of the Siemens type S700 which can be found on many railways today. They are normally placed closer to the track than the model is on the C track, and on some railways they are even coloured yellow.
The Model
A few posts back I wrote about the new Märklin decoder for the C-track points. The decoder speaks DCC, so you can use it with whatever digital system you have. What I did not talk about was the point mechanism. The Märklin point mechanism is not really a motor, it is a magnetic coil that will instantly throw the point in either direction depending on where the current is. Basically it performs the standard "click! click!" switching you know from the many layouts that you have undoubtedly seen.
When dealing with the C-track, I think this type of point mechanism is good enough. I do not necessarily need slow moving points on this kind of track.
The idea of the point motor imitation is really simple, but effective. When you have installed the point motor in the point, you can remove the little manual throw and insert the point motor imitation in its place to indicate that the point is no longer manual.
I did this with some of my points and I think it is a good way to indicate which points are digital (or just remote controlled) and which are not - and, well, it also look kind of cool! ;-)
If you have fitted your C-track points with point mechanisms, you should try and use the motor imitations. I think you will be happy with the result.
Update: The motor imitations are only available when you buy a Märklin point motor. Many people use different point motors (e.g. the Viessmann motor). If you do that, you will not get the accessories mentioned in the article. They are, however, available as spare parts.
The spare part numbers are:
Märklin/Trix C track motor immitation: E521790 (a bag of
five)
Märklin/Trix C track manual throw ("Handhebel"): E520980 (a bag of ten)
Happy modelling!