This is an old revision of the document!
N gauge is great for small home layouts. But because it's so small, accessories such as electric point motors are very big, comparatively.
So I thought I should try and make a very small motor driven point system that when placed on the layout, would not appear too monstrously large. Many people put their point switch motors underneath the layout board and use a solenoid driver with a lever up through the board. Some motor systems use a tiny driven cable above the layout's ground level. My system will use the same system of a driven cable in a plastic sheath, but will be mounted above the board in a scale manner. This should allow switching systems to be mounted in a to-scale signal box, with switching cables run along the track just like IRL.
The stepper motors to be used are like this:
picture of 10mm stepper
the control will be an Espruino microcontroller;
picture of espruino board
with a 2-coil driver board.
picture of driver board
My predicted layout has three levels, a top level fiddle yard, figure of eight main track with reverse loop, a terminus branch station and many ways to reverse train and engine direction for maximum shunting fun.
This is a very small layout, even for n-gauge, at 120x60cm. A standard board size in the UK, the metric version of 4'x2'.
