Model Railroading > Wiring Signals from a Tortoise

Ok...I\'ve looked at the instructions, done searches on prior posts on here, tried to find a Circuitron website, and messed around with different wiring schemes but having been able to get my signal to work. I\'m running DC power, and trying to opperate an NJ International Green over Red Signal. 3 wires come off of the signal, the red and green wires and a common. The red and green both have resistors on them. According to the instuctions, only one wire should attach to the number 1 contact on the Tortious. Of course, this isnt working for obvious electrical reasons. Which number contacts on the Tortious should the 3 wires from the signal be attached to??
Thanks in advance...
John

It\'s on the sheet provided with the Tortoise machine as to which accesory contacts to wire to. Also, did you wire a seperate 12 volt DC power supply to power the lights? We used a cheap radio shack power supply rated at about about 500ma and did this successfully for a friend with a two light Tomar signal(had to add resistors). I don\'t know about your NJ Interntational stuff however. I assume if you added the resistors, you knew the rating of the bulbs. Personally, I would never touch that overscale stuff. If no one can answer your question with a diagram, I\'ll go back and take a look at it and do the same, but I\'ll be busy for the next week or so.

Circuitron can be reached at 815-886-9010. My diagram just shows #6 contact for red and # 7 for green. Dan

OK John. As I have installed quite a few of these turnout controls on the D&J Railroad, I could almost do it in my sleep, but this is an opportunity to slow down and review my practices.

The first thing you might do is check to be sure the lamps work on the signal tower. Just connect the leads to you dc power supply and they should glow. Theres nothing more frustrating than to have soldered wires and troubleshoot for a while only to find out the bulbs where burned out.

The instruction page that is provided with the switch machine has a very good illustration on how to setup the actuating circuit to run the Tortoise. The Tortoise is a very low current draw, so you can leave it connected to the power supply with no problem. Sorta like running the power window down in your car and not releasing the button when the window stops. This might damage the car window motor after a while, but it won\'t hurt the Tortoise.

The next step is to connect your signal lights to the Tortoise. We will use terminals 2, 3, & 4 of the Tortoise for this application.
- Connect the common wire from the signal tower directly to your dc negative (common) power source. If you connect your wire to the dc power supply, you will see the positive and negative symbol on the power pack. If your power pack has the dc power wires connected internally and the wire is molded together like a lamp cord, usually the common wire will be marked with a color (usually white) along the edge or the wire itself will have a ridge you can feel.
- Connect the positive lead from your dc power source to terminal 4 of the Tortoise.
- Connect the wire from your signal tower\'s green light to terminal 2 of your Tortoise.
- Operate the Tortoise to see if the green light is glowing according to the track routing. If it is not correct, move the green lamp wire to terminal 3 of the Tortoise.
- Connect the signal tower\'s red light to the remaining terminal and once again check the operation of the Tortoise to see that the proper light is glowing according to the track routing.

The attached a schematic will help you with this.

Ken, D&J Railroad, Stafford, VA

---