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I'm planning an expansion to the mainline of our layout. One of the most popular things we run is an eggliner on a auto reverser. it's connected to its own lgb starter set transformer, with an aristo reversing unit. works great, people love it.

I would like to set up a crossing, so the eggliner track crosses the mainline. But I want an auto stop for the crossing, so the eggliner would stop when a mainline train was in the crossing. I need to keep the egg liner track on its own power supply. I think toddallin's bump a.s.s. system won't work, because it relies (as far as I can tell) on both tracks in the crossing being on the same power supply

I know this can be done with opto sensors, but I'm worried that it might be beyond me. Are there any comerial systems for doing this that anyone can recomend?

PS I've thought of converting the eggliner to batteries, and using an infrared detector on the front of the eggliner. I might end up doing that but I'd rather not

 

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It's a good idea, but I can't do it--there's not enough space

Dallee makes something called the "opto--dt" which i think will do what I want

 

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Thank you very much everyone and I hope I can have a bit more of your patience and time.  It looks to me like all the methods of doing this (except Del's battery power method) would stop the functioning of the Aristo auto reverse unit--do i have that wrong? 

I like the idea of the infrared emitter/detector, but how waterproof/rugged is it? Dave Bodnar's idea of putting the two next to each other and using reflections is good--you could hide the emitter and the detector and the electronics in a single trackside building and keep them out of the weather.


Del's solution would be great but I'd end up with a very expensive eggliner! On the other hand, it'd be readily adaptable to, say, the trolley aristo is coming out with....