Controlling Skaledale Lighting with Railmaster?

[Ullswater]

Dear All

 

Please go gently with me, this is my first post!

 

I am setting up a new Hornby DCC layout in my converted garage loft, and all is going well so far. I am successfuly controlling trains, points, signals etc from Railmaster.

 

I

 

am also experimenting with Skaledale lighting, and would like to be able to swtich on and off the lighting from Railmaster. I simply want to be able to control everything on my layout from the PC. I imagine it must be possible in some way to do this using

 

the decoder with the correct CV settings, similar to the way you can with a R406 signal, and use the signal light icon in Railmaster (I realise there isn't a specific lights control in Railmaster).

 

Has anybody ever done this and if so how?

 

Any

 

and all advice gratefully received

 

All the best

best

[stevecamden]

 

If you want on/off with the decoder and rail master then just wire the common and one of the other two outlets on the port. - So the third port isn't used. Remember that the decoder is 12v common positive on continuous output setting the CV value to

 

'O', so if you are using LEDS this is the anode.

[LMSTim]

I would use an accessory decoder (same as used for points and signals) and connect the lighting to the common and green side. Then you can put point control lights somewhere on your layout and have green=on and red=off. You can even label them if you plan

 

to be able to switch your lights on in sections.

 

Important note, though. The accessory decoder can only control up to about 600mA so be careful, especially with Skaledale lighting, which is incandescent and therefore uses much more power than LEDs.

 

If you plan to switch many lights on a single accessory decoder port you should switch a relay instead of the lights directly. This mean you can use, say, the auxilliary output of the DCC controller itself or a separate power supply and just use RailMaster

 

to switch a relay, which will in turn switch the lights.

 

I hope you understand all of that.

 

[Gregd99]

Welcome to the forum. The introduction seems gentle so far!!

 

Hornby advise 50mA per skaledale lamp - http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/4161-hornby-skalelighting-lamps/

 

this means that you could power 12 lamps from the 600mA

 

continuous output of the decoder. remember that this means that

1) you don't use the decoder for anything else and

2) 600mA if your command station supply is consumed on lighting. not such a big deal for the elite but 60% of what the select feeds.

 

LEDs

 

by comparison nominally need 20mA but depending on the application 5mA might be enough - you need to experiment. an advantage of leds is that they don't burn out our generate much heat.

 

The skaledale approach has the advantage that it is plug and play.

 

nicely wired and with distribution boards....

[Ullswater]

Many thanks for all the replies - all understood. Makes complete sense.

 

I think I'm going to end up using LEDs. I quite like the Skaledale lighting but I can see I will be drilling to many big holes for the plugs in the baseboard.

 

Thanks

 

again