TrainController Gold and Silver - Freiwald Software

17.5 The Track Layout of a Turntable/Transfer Table
Active and Passive Tracks of Turntables
Each physical turntable or turntable decoder, respectively, can support a maximum
number of track exits or tracks. The maximum number of tracks of the Maerklin digital
turntable 7686, for instance, is 48. Usually only a fraction of the possible tracks are actually
used.
The used tracks are divided into active tracks and passive tracks.
Active tracks correspond to those track exits of the turntable, which are connected to existing
tracks of the layout. Engines can enter and leave the turntable via active tracks.
Passive tracks correspond to those track exits of the turntable, where the bridge of the
turntable can be turned to, but which are not connected to existing tracks of the layout.
In many cases there is only a short stub track associated with a passive track. Engines
cannot enter and leave the turntable via passive tracks.
Diagram 176, for instance, shows a turntable with 6 active and 4 passive tracks. The total
number of active and passive tracks must be always even.
Note, that all active and passive tracks are usually important in conjunction with physical
control of the turntable bridge and the turntable decoder. The decoder does not care,
whether an engine can leave the bridge via a certain track exit or not. For this reason the
difference between active and passive tracks is irrelevant for the decoder. But the
bridge must be able to turn the house to each existing track exit, regardless whether the
exit is passive or not. In Diagram 176,
for instance, there are 10 track positions, where
the house of the bridge can go and thus all 10 positions, i.e. the number of active and
passive tracks, must be programmed into the decoder, if any, as different positions.
Synchronizing the Turntable Symbol
The turntable symbol in the switchboard of TrainController Gold only displays active
track exits. In the switchboard it is important to save place and to visualize, how the
turntable tracks are connected to the circumjacent track layout. For this reason the passive
tracks, which do not have a connection to the track layout, are not displayed by the
turntable symbol in the switchboard.
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