I spent some time today deciding whether I could use a 7 or 8 channel Darlington Pair IC (like the ULN2003A) to drive the point motors. They can only handle 500mA per channel, but it's possible to parallel up multiple ICs to increase the maximum current. The problem is the Vce(sat) is 1.2V and sinking 500mA means each IC will have to dump 600mW of power somewhere. It's nice that the chips are under 20p each, but I'd need a lot of chips to drive all 19 point motors (19 solenoids x 2 coils x 3 ...
