Creating a replica of a German Light signal

Each year I invite a group of train friends around to visit the layout. Since we live down the end of a dead end road I thought it would be fun to install a signal next to the road for them to see just before they arrive at the house. A distant signal at a neighbor's house would make it nice and prototypical. The plan was to make a simple black board with the required lights in it and run an extension cord to it.



This page describes the steps I took to make the signal and shows how much the plan changed over a couple of weeks.

Signal operation

A demonstration of how signals and their distance signals are set in my model train layout software. German colour light type signals are used to represent the signals on screen.

Viessmann 5210 Signalsteuerbaustein

I use the Viessmann signal modules to drive my light signals from k83 (Viessmann 5211) type modules.

Advantages of these modules are:

• You can use momentary contact decoders (k83) type instead of K84s
• Once a signal aspect is selected, it is latched (held) by the module
• Each module can support two signals (up to a 3 aspect plus a 4 aspect)
• It has the ability to handle the Dunkelschaltung of German distance signals on the same pole when the Hp signal is on aspect 0
• It can use 16 VAC or DC input
• The signal lights fade out prototypically

I find it useful to mount them on Velcro strips as shown below. In this case I needed to drive 3 HP0/1 signals and one Vr0/1/2 signals plus a couple of turnouts so I needed two 5211 modules to do the digital switching.