Some Operational Details...

Point-to-Point Model railroading... It was both straight-forward and and pain-in-the-ass to set up multiple point-to-point shelf runs.

Bachmann sells a point-to-point auto reverseing system. A DC system of course. I don't really need the complexity or power of a DCC system right now, and setting up an automated DCC point to point system seems even less trivial then a DC system.

I bought the bachman system on the assumption that I could rewire it, and NOT use their custom/propritary/expensive "auto reverse" track. And this proved to be true.

Power from auto-reversing power/throttle comes in on a mini-plug. 4 wires coming out of that as follows:
White and Orange to the North and South Rail, respectively. I am assuming this is what powers the track

Green: Green Goes into the "North" track... This point seems to be where the train stops/reverses when POWERED engine crosses it. When an Un-powered car crosses this point, nothing happens.

Blue: Blue is wired to BOTH of the prongs on the A side... Two separate under track output joints... but its the same wire going to both. prongs:

Here's what the End and Middle pieces looks like:

Both incoming wires on the north and south prong are wired together, and sent to the South Rail. It is at this point that the train stops/reverses when the powered wheel hits it.

Some thoughts:
The middle track wiring is entirely redundant... Its a safe and foolproof way to ensure the blue wire gets sent all the way to the end track, creating the stopping point.

From a hack-ability standpoint, you could leave all those middle tracks unwired (IE regular EZ track), as long as you ran a single wire from one of the A side prongs on the Start piece, to the a side prong on the end piece. Alternately, the blue wire can be run to whatever end piece track you want, as long as its soldered to the opposite rail that the green wire is soldered to.



Currently this Bachman system powers the Giants train from Bobble Head Station to the elevated viaduct termination point.

My Cal Train point-to-point system uses a set up I discovered by haunting Ebay. it involves a standard DC power pack, and a Peerless 525 controller block

and a bit of wiring that resembles the "detect the short circuit /switch the polarity" action of the Bachmann system. Currently the end points reverse instantly. I have to add another module to create pauses at the ends of the line, and a third module if I want to add station stops in the middle of the line.  At this point, I'm just assuming my Cal Train tech-workes are doing combat drops at each train stop...   The herky-jerky reverse of direction sometimes results in a decoupling when the train is in push mode, but another transit of the line usually causes a recouple without any derailments or problems. One of my Cal Train bombardier cars is running on non-standard trucks, and the height difference in couplers is causing this.  To be fixed at some point when I care enough to blow $30 on replacement trucks.

A side benefit of those non standard trucks is that they allow the consist to make it around the 18 inch curve without derailing.
When the train is in push mode, the engine's rear rails actually rub against the bombardier car and the standard trucks don't have any kind of "give," which results in them being pulled off the track. The mushy fix-up-trucks I installed on a broken ebay-score allowed the bumping between bombadier car and engine railing without causing a derailment.... as long as the train is traveling slow enough. A long term solution is to install an extra long coupler on the lead bombardier car, and on the engine, so they don't rub against each other in push mode, while rounding the sole corner in the run.

My Muni run is currently decommissioned until I can rewire it to a second Peerless block, and I will be experimenting with using the same power supply to power two separate peerless control blocks. I'll let you know if I burn the house down..

I've been haunting Ebay for Giants train-cars, and have added two additional dome cars, and a flat car (sans trophy) to my train since its inception. I've also been looking into lighting up the dome cars... More to come on that, as well as coverage of my re-lighting and re-powering my previously mentioned Boeing LRV, which sounded like a blender set to puree when it ran.