When wiring dcc specialties auto reverse ar for reverse loop, should you have feeds for every piece of track or just feed the track from the ar? Also do you need an ar for every loop or can one ar take care of two loops? Thanks.
Really can do one reversing loop without possible peril. As for the the track feeders, that depends on how you set it up. You could set it up just around the turnout or do the whole loop. A minimalist approach would be to only do a section the length of your longest collection of motive power. But if you have passenger cars with metal wheels and lighting, you should do the whole loop.
Pesonally, I would feed every piece of track in the reversing section from the A/R. Connect all of the feeders together and connect the two bundles to the A/R.
I haven't owned an auto reverse as I have only one wye to do reversals, requiring 4 isolated rails at the 2 legs diverging from the wye shaped turnout and one DPDT (or SPDT, forget now) X wired toggle switch to change the polarity of the isolated section. But a Hex Frog Juicer can handle 6 different turnout frogs' polarities. You only need 1 out of the 6 available plugs/leads to operate a hands-off reversing section. All you need to do is decide which section to isolate (usually at the turnout's 4 rails rails at it's frog end, not the 2 at the single, points end of it. Juicer switches polarity of the tail end of the wye to match inbound and outbound trains TO/FROM the tail of wye. If wye's tail (not wive's tale) connects to more main line instead of a stub end, simply gap it at the end of furthest length of track from turnout your likeliest longest trains you'll be running, so that it fits within this gaped area. HFJuicer will take care of rest. Now this, say, 7' run of track is 3rd leg of wye, but very long, not a 2.5' stub end I have on mine. If all your rail joiners are snug, rail tips are shiny clean or soldered together, there's no need to add feeders or even buss wiring under benchwork. I have a 35'X 5.5' at widest curve ,slimming down to about 12" along wall to a 90Deg. tunneled curve to a 2.5' Interchange,and a wye at highest altitude at other end, spurs, a passing siding, engine house/smaller interchange,etc. and operates fine without feeders or buss .....Hope you solve all your track needs.....OOPs, I assume you're DCC !,..... Mark
I agree with this. It will make things easier if your wires for the reversing loop are a different color than for the regular track.
I wire my reversing loops the same way that I wire all other power blocks. The wire from the AR is considered the buss and is 14awg and it follows the track within the reversing loop. Then in the middle of each track piece I solder 22awg feeders and connect them to the buss. If it is a true loop (the entrance and exit are the same turnout) then it has to be long enough to accommodate the longest train that you plan on running through it.
You can do more than one reverse loop with a single auto-reverser, the problem is if you have a train traversing both loops at the same time there is a good chance you will end up with a short that will shut both down. For this reason, and the fact that in the grand scheme of things auto-reversers are not that expensive, I would suggest not trying to do more than one reverse loop with a reverser. To use a hex frog juicer on a reversing section, you need to use two outputs, one for each rail.
Again, I never owned an AR. I toggle polarity for the one reverse (Wye) I have. 'CSX Robert' A HFJ requires 1 lead out to each frog and 2 poles in, which it uses as soon as it senses a short at a frog where loco's powered wheel is leaving an opposite pole than frog is. The flip is so rapid a microscond that no short is seen by DCC throttle. I think the chance of causing a short if two (trains you mean ?) are in same loop or wheels traversing 2 different frogs at the very same instant is extremely rare. Unless there is something I'm forgetting I can't see what the issue is...Even if there was a quick short, the power might go down and reset itself with no damage to anything; like common stalls we all incur anyway. No / I still don't follow the advice to feed every piece of track. If track is live it's live on both rails. If there is a stall on same section of track then either replace the joiner or solder it at the gap. Especially if the MRR is small to medium sized like my road, my NCE PowerCab never has too little power to run it. Back in analog days we had to have feeders ti every block to fun independently in that block. Aside from a huge club layout I find no need for feeders or a buss wire ....Besides, this has no direct relation to the question of AR installment. It's a power continuity concern .
