ESU SwitchPilot

I am seriously unimpressed with these. I tried out my first one this week and it's cost me $150 so far in related damage. It took me ages to get the thing to take an address and then, for reasons that are beyond me, it managed to unprogram all my other point decoders. The address it took was not the one it was given either.

While reprogramming my other point decoders I managed to blow my Lenz LS150 which controls my slow motorised points on the main line (by my own stupidity to be fair, I was rewiring it while the wires were still live). Now to cap it all the Switch decoder will not work at all. I had really hoped that these decoders would be an improvement on the fickle articles currently on the market but I'm afraid this actually seems to be worse in many respects. It will only control snap action motors for one thing. If you want it to control slow motion motors you have to buy the extension which you need the Main Switch pilot to operate it with so you end up paying for two point decoders to get slow motion point control of four points. There are also limitations on what kind of slow motion point motors you can use with it. e.g. it doesn't seem possible to use Tillig although you can use Tortoise.

I really fail to see the need for the servo motor outputs too, How many people will actually need these?

Much of the manual touts how easier it is to programme these with the ECoS. Oh really? It refers you to section 13ff of the ECoS manual, which doesn't offer any advice on the matterl.

It also gives you CV's you need to program for Peco points, this is not straight forward as you have to change the power in if you are using an external source and use an 180ohm resistor across output one. If you don't do this it can be fatal.

It has railcom and is supposed to give you feedback on the point position, good luck to you if you get that far.

So to sum up last week I had slow motion motorised point control and this week I have none and a dud point decoder which is going back to Germany. I have canceled my order for the extensions too.

Now that I've got that out my system I'm going back to the garage to do something else on my layout which will hopefully not be so costly or frustrating.