Rail Conductor - AniMove - Animate a Water Tower Spout

Rail Conductor AniMove DCC Decoder Animates Water Tower Spout

Many DCC steam locomotive decoders have added a "water stop" sound effect that has audibles for water coming out of the spout and the tender water lid being closed. This begs for animation to drop the spout. Turn up the audio in the video below to see and hear all of these effects together.

An AniMove DCC Decoder is wired to a micro servo (ROB-09065 ROHS) from SparkFun to make the water tower spout go up and down. The attachment (or “horn”) with the longest arms was used since this matched the up/down travel desired on the spout. Then the “cable” was threaded through the hole furthest from the armature. The 3 wires were all connected to the AniMove decoder: the black wire was connected to Ground, the white to +5Volts and the red wire goes to the servo output (see manual). Only a single screw was needed to mount the servo (not much torque here). Scrap wood was glued to the underside of the water tower base to accommodate the servo mounting hole.

Rail Conductor AniMove DCC Decoder Servo

Rail Conductor AniMove DCC Decoder Servo Operates Water Tank Spout

Finally, the following commands were sent to the decoder to make the spout move as you see in the video above.

Down:

TBD

Up:

TBD