The first three points are in place at ‘Overdale Quarry’ and wired up to the Lenz LS150 accessory decoder. The output addresses for these turnouts on the LS150 have been left at the defaults of 1 to 3. These can be thrown by my Lenz hand held throttles. To do this I have to access the ‘Switching Points’ menu and select the appropriate number. Although this works, it isn’t particularly intuitive. What I really want, is to switch the points with the click of a mouse and for this I’m using ‘PanelPro’.

Changing the turnout icon in PanelPro.

Rather than use the icons provided by ‘PanelPro’ I am creating my own, to overlay onto my custom ‘Dales Peak’ schematic background. ‘PanelPro’ requires four icons for each turnout, to represent the four different states: closed, thrown, inconsistent and unknown.

In the screen above I have already placed icons for two of the points and I am just selecting the icons for the turnout labelled XT2. PanelPro’s system naming is formed from a single letter representing the hardware system, followed by a single letter indicating the type. In this case ‘X’ for the Lenz ‘XpressNet’ and ‘T’ for ‘Turnout’ followed by the hardware address.

Adding the turnout to the track schematic

Having changed the icons I now click the ‘Add right-hand turnout:’ button and the icon appears at the top left of the panel.

Turnout closed

The turnout icon is then moved into its position on the schematic. This is done on a Mac by either ‘right clicking’ the icon, on a two button mouse or clicking whilst holding ‘cmd’ + ‘alt’ on one button mouse and dragging the icon to the required position. When first positioned the turnout is shown in the closed position.

Turnout thrown

Now when I click on the icon the turnout changes from closed to thrown and ‘hey presto’ the point is thrown on the layout as well. How cool is that, at this point I’m feeling like a big kid and I’m really impressed… ‘Progress’.