Description
What it is
A small board that drives two complete colour-light signals — we call each one a mast — and works out for itself what each one should be showing. Each mast can be a 2, 3 or 4 aspect signal, and you choose that per mast, so a 3-aspect signal and a 4-aspect one can sit on the same board.
It is not a flasher or a lighting effect. The board follows the aspect sequences of Network Rail’s own colour-light junction signalling standard. You never have to learn any of those rules: you wire the lamps, type in a few numbers, and the board does the thinking.
Everything is set up from a web page the board serves itself. There is no software to install and no computer that has to stay switched on.
Start simple: one detector per signal, and they sort themselves out
The simplest useful setup is a signal chaser, and it is genuinely three numbers. Put one block detector in the section just beyond each signal and tell the board which detector belongs to which mast. From then on:
- A train reaches the section and the signal behind it goes straight to red.
- As the train leaves, that signal steps back up on a timer you choose — red → yellow → double yellow → green.
- Each signal quietly tells the ones behind it what it is showing, so the signal in rear of a red shows yellow, the one behind that shows double yellow, and so on back down the line. You do not wire that up or configure it — you name the next signal along and the cascade happens by itself, whether that signal is on the same board or on another one at the far end of the layout.
That is a complete, correct, fully automatic signalling system for any plain running line. Plenty of layouts never need anything else.
Grow into a Network Rail junction, one box at a time
When you are ready for junctions, a single dropdown changes how the signals behave. The five choices are not names we made up — they are the five junction control regimes from the real railway’s signalling standard, and the board plays each one properly. They all answer the same question: when a train is going to take the turning, how should the signals warn and protect it?
- MAF — Main Aspect Free. The default, and your plain-line workhorse: nothing is held back and nothing flashes, the signals simply cascade. At a junction the signal clears for whichever route is set and lights its route indicator, announcing the turning without slowing anyone down for it.
- MAR — Main Aspect from Red. The junction signal stands at red while the diverging route is set, so the driver sees yellows building up behind it and brakes early. It clears only when the train reaches a release point you nominate — or on a timer if you would rather not fit a detector there. This is what the real railway does at a sharp, slow turnout.
- MAY-FA — Main Aspect from Yellow, Flashing Aspects. The one you have seen from a train window on fast lines: the junction signal holds at a steady yellow while the signals behind it show a flashing single yellow, then a flashing double yellow. You configure the flashing nowhere at all — put the junction in this mode and every signal reading it starts flashing of its own accord, even on other boards, and stops when the junction goes back to normal.
- MAY-YY — Main Aspect from Yellow, steady double yellow. Exactly MAY-FA, one dropdown different: the junction still holds at yellow, but the warning behind it shows as an ordinary steady double yellow instead of flashing. Choose it where flashing heads are not right for your region or period.
- MAF-SD — Main Aspect Free with Splitting Distant. For gentler divergences, where the real railway does not hold the train at all: the junction signal clears normally and the route indication itself is the warning, repeated on the signal behind so the driver gets advance notice of the turning.
Two things happen on their own, and they look like magic the first time. If the branch itself is occupied, a flashing-yellow junction quietly behaves as if it were in MAR and holds at red rather than inviting a train into a busy section. And once a train has been released through a junction and cleared it, the route is used up automatically — the route indicator goes out and the next train must have the route set afresh. Both are the real railway’s rules, and both simply happen.
Route indicators (feathers)
Each signal can drive up to three route indicators — the row of white lamps that leans away from a junction signal to point the way the points are set. A feather lights when its route is set and the signal is showing a proceed aspect; at red every feather is dark, because there is no route to offer a stopped train; and only one shows at a time. All three rules are built in.
What you need — and what you don’t
You do not need the rest of System 2. No panel system, no route processor, no point motors, nothing else installed first. The AutoSignal is perfectly happy being the only MegaPoints board on your layout.
The honest shopping list, in three sizes:
- Working signals you control yourself. The AutoSignal, a regulated 12 V DC supply (1 A or more), one or two LED signal masts and a 1 kΩ resistor per lamp. Both signals light and run, and the test buttons on the board’s own web page force any aspect onto the real lamps for 30 seconds at a click — ideal for proving your wiring, or for a signal that simply needs to look right at green.
- Signals that work a passing train, automatically. All of the above plus one block detector on the track — infrared, magnet-operated or current-sensing, whichever suits your layout — and one System 2 input board to put what that detector sees onto the network. That is an S2 Mini Panel (8 inputs), an S2 Panel Controller (16 inputs) or an S2 IN-32 (32 inputs) — pick whichever suits how many detectors you will end up with. The AutoSignal cannot read the blocks itself, so that one input board is the only other thing you need to buy.
- A properly signalled stretch of line. All of the above, plus a detector per signalled section and another AutoSignal for each further pair of signals. Junctions, flashing yellows and route indicators join in whenever you are ready.
Nothing else is hiding in the small print. No computer has to be running, nothing gets installed on a PC, and the board never touches track power — so it does not care whether you run DCC or analogue.
It works alongside everything you already run
The AutoSignal joins the ordinary two-wire MegaPoints network, so it sits happily beside whatever else you have — panels, servo and solenoid drivers, relays, DCC, RFID, your existing accessories. It takes nothing over. If you already own a Panel Controller, a Mini Panel or an IN-32 with a spare input, your block detectors can go straight onto it and you need buy nothing but the AutoSignal itself.
And if you would rather it kept itself to itself, it will: leave the network pair unconnected and the board still lights, tests and runs its two signals on its own.
Setting it up
Give it 12 V and the board offers you its own Wi-Fi hotspot straight away — no button to press and no cable to find. Connect a phone or a laptop to it, point it at your own Wi-Fi if you want to, and every setting lives on a web page you can open from the armchair. It checks its own wiring when you press Save, and new features arrive over Wi-Fi by themselves, free, with your settings kept.
Specification
- Two signal masts per board, each independently set to 2, 3 or 4 aspects.
- Common cathode (common negative) wiring — one feed wire per lamp, one shared return to GND. Four lamps take five wires, not eight. This board is not for common-anode (common positive) masts.
- Up to three route indicators per mast (RI1–RI3), with the shared hub lamp on RIC.
- Designed for 12 V LED signals; a 1 kΩ resistor in each lamp feed.
- Power: regulated 12 V DC, 1 A or more, into the four-way plug — and it genuinely does not matter which way round.
- Network: the same two wires (L to L, H to H) that every other System 2 board uses. Optional if the board is working on its own.
- Screw terminals throughout, a HOTSPOT button, and power and running lights on the board.
- Settings and updates from any phone, tablet or PC browser. No app, no drivers, no cables.
See it working before you buy
Pete Waterman’s Making Tracks is home to six unique layouts, and the colour-light signalling on the fourth of them, Making Tracks 4, runs entirely on AutoSignals — nine boards driving twenty-three signal heads across four running lines, from the fiddle-yard dispatch signals to the tunnel mouths at the far end. Every red behind a train and every junction move all day is the same board and the same settings page you would be buying here.
There is a live simulation of the Making Tracks 4 signalling you can watch running right now.
Documentation
System2 AutoSignal — User Guide — the complete guide: wiring, first switch-on, every setting, four worked example layouts and the questions people ask.
