System2
Modern control for your model railway, made as friendly as the stations you grew up with. No soldering. No computer wizardry. If you can use a phone, you can do this.
The very same system chosen for Pete Waterman’s “The Grand Challenge” — holder of the Guinness World Record for the largest portable model railway. If it can run that, it can run yours.
System2 is a family of small electronic boards. Each one does a single, simple job on your layout — one moves your points, one lights up your control panel, one keeps your signals right.
On their own, each board is a tidy little helper. Joined together, they become a complete control system for your whole railway. And here is the part that puts people at ease: you set every single one of them up the very same way — by opening a web page on your phone, tablet, or computer. The board shows you friendly menus, you make your choices, you press save. That’s the whole skill.
Boards use plug-in screw terminals. Wires go in, screws tighten. Nothing to melt, nothing to burn.
The boards do the thinking themselves. Your railway runs whether the PC is on, off, or doesn’t exist.
Not a line of code, ever. You choose from menus and tick boxes, like setting a new television.
And one thing System2 never touches: driving your trains. However you run them today — ordinary DC, DCC, sound, the lot — your controller stays exactly as it is. System2 looks after the points, signals, panel and lighting around your trains.
Here is the only clever bit — and it really is simple.
Every button, switch, signal, point and sensor can be given a number. Think of it as a channel — exactly like tuning two walkie-talkies to the same channel so they can talk to each other. Give two things the same channel number, and they work together. Press a button set to channel 42, and the point set to channel 42 throws. Want a signal to change at the same time? Give it channel 42 as well. Now one press does both.
One press on channel 42 — and everything tuned to 42 responds together.
Easier still: you usually don’t type numbers at all. Just tell each board which “board number” it is, and it fills in all its own channels for you — neatly, and with no clashes. Typing channel numbers by hand is there if you want it, but most people never need to.
It works exactly the same whether your boards are joined by a single pair of wires, or chatting over your home Wi‑Fi. You choose. Many people use the wire for rock-solid reliability and Wi‑Fi for the setup pages — but one is plenty to begin with.
And now the secret’s out: in the MegaPoints menus, these channels have a proper name — vPorts. That’s the one little word worth knowing, and now you can see why we kept it so simple. Whenever you spot vPort on a page, just think channel: same idea, same numbers, same friendly rule — give two things the same one, and they work together.
You don’t buy “a System2”. You buy the one board that does the job in front of you — and add more whenever you fancy. Here are the everyday helpers most people start with.
Whatever sort of point motor you already have, there’s a board for it.
Drives small servo motors for beautifully smooth, slow, lifelike point movement — and for semaphore signals, level-crossing gates and barriers too.
For the snap-action twin-coil point motors (Peco, SEEP and the like). One board replaces your capacitor-discharge unit, your button panel and the relay wiring.
For slow-motion “stall” motors (Tortoise, Cobalt, MTB, Fulgurex) and Kato’s own point motors. Lovely, gentle, prototypical movement.
Run a DCC layout already? This quietly listens to your DCC signal and lets your existing controller drive System2 boards too — with no rewiring at all.
A proper lit mimic panel — the heart of any layout — without custom electronics.
Wire your push-buttons, toggle switches and indicator lamps to this board. It reads your controls and lights up to show exactly what your layout is doing — which way points are set, which signals are off, and which sections are occupied.
The same idea, pocket-sized. Perfect for a small panel, a single yard or a fiddle yard — and you can use several together as your panel grows.
Let your layout (and you) see what’s actually happening on the track.
Watches up to thirty-two track sensors and tells the rest of the layout what it finds: which sections are occupied, and which way each point is lying.
Stick a tiny, cheap tag under a loco or coach. As it rolls over a read-head, the layout knows exactly which one it is — no more guessing which train is in the hidden siding.
The visible end of the RFID system. Little numeric displays on your panel or fascia show the loco that was just spotted at a chosen spot.
Signals and lighting that bring the scene to life.
Proper British colour-light signals that change aspect by themselves as your trains move — green, yellow, red — just like the real thing. One board can look after several signal heads.
For station lamps, building interiors, colour signals and scenic lighting. Drive lots of lights — including strings of colour-changing LEDs — with far less wiring.
Eight proper electrical switches. By far the most popular use is frog switching on your points — but they’re just as happy with the bigger or mains-powered jobs like lighting circuits, a turntable or uncouplers, safely separated from your control wiring.
When you’re comfortable with the basics, the same family can take a great deal of the fiddly work off your hands.
Instead of throwing points one at a time, you store routes. Press a single button — or let a train, a tag, or a clock do it — and a whole sequence sets itself in the proper order: points swing across, signals clear, and the road is ready.
From a helping hand to a railway that can run itself — whenever you decide you’re ready.
You’ll likely never need these to begin — but it’s reassuring to know they’re there. Nothing here changes how the simple things work.
If you ever want a PC in charge, System2 speaks the language of popular railway programs (such as JMRI) — for timetables, throttles and screen-based panels.
A dedicated bridge can link System2 to computer software and to other manufacturers’ DCC command stations, so different parts of your setup all talk to one another.
Big club or exhibition layout? Optional monitors and repeaters keep a large network healthy and let you check, at a glance, that everything is talking nicely.
No special software. No cables to your computer. No instruction manual the size of a telephone directory. Just three steps, the first time you switch a board on.
The board makes its own little Wi‑Fi network, named after itself — something like panel‑64ee04.
Join that network. A setup page pops up on its own. Type in your home Wi‑Fi name and password, and press save.
The board joins your network and shows you where to find it. From now on, open its page in any web browser — phone, tablet or computer.
Joining boards together is just as simple. To link two boards with a wire, you connect just two wires between them — and they find each other automatically. No tiny switches to set, no addresses to dial in, no jumpers to fiddle with.
The bits people quietly dread — updates, backups, things going wrong — are handled for you, simply.
When an update is ready, the board simply lets you know and offers it — then you decide whether to take it. Nothing ever changes behind your back. Updates are digitally signed so only genuine ones can install, and if you do say yes, the board checks itself afterwards and quietly undoes it on its own should anything not be quite right.
One click saves all your settings safely. If a board ever fails, restore them onto a new one in moments — or simply give the new board the same channel numbers and it slots straight back in, with its neighbours none the wiser.
Each board has a simple health page — Wi‑Fi strength, memory, activity — shown with friendly charts. A quick look tells you everything is humming along.
Hit a snag? Send a message straight from the board. It quietly attaches the technical details for you, so the British support team can understand and help all the faster.
Your boards talk to each other on your own railway, never over the internet. No accounts, no subscriptions, nothing “in the cloud” to go wrong. No home Wi‑Fi? No matter — the wire runs the railway, and for setup each board brings its own little Wi‑Fi network with it. The internet only comes into it when you choose — taking an update when one is offered, for instance.
Start with one board doing one job — your points, perhaps, or your control panel. Get the hang of it; it won’t take long. Then add the next board whenever you fancy. Everything you’ve already set up simply carries on working.
There’s no big system to learn, no computer to keep running, and nothing that can’t be undone. You can change your mind as often as you like.
“The joy belongs on the layout — not in the wiring.”
