I can't find anything up to date but this section, so apologies if this has already been suggested. I have been driving myself nuts trying to make a compact automated machine setup using switch pipes (power) and buildcraft gates to turn off power to machines when they are not in use. Currently when you place a switch pipe, it is automatically open until you supply redstone to close it. I've been having to invert buildcraft gate signals to allow the switch pipe to open when the gate is outputting a signal on "has work". This takes up an extra face on the machine as has been very problematic, especially if i need items AND fluid to be input into the machine.

My suggestion is to allow switch pipes to open upon redstone instead of close. Of course this would have to be some sort of non-default option as to not break any existing builds with them.
A few ideas to make this work:
Config file option
UI option on the pipe
Some kind of item interaciton on the pipe (use a piece of redstone (or torch) on it to invert the signal it gets)
(I personally like the torch idea.)

Thanks for this mod, it's been very useful.

Switch pipes are mostly obsolete, since there is a "Power Requested" trigger on pipes in the latest BC versions.

i.e. Place a gate on the wooden pipe connected to an engine and specify Power Requested->Redstone signal.

oh i see. However my engines run all the time being steam engines on a boiler there is no point in turning them off. I guess I will have to do with what my setup is, thanks for taking the time to look at this.

(i actually just now figured out a way to do this the way i need to. Put red pipe wire on the switch and have it turn on the pipe when a job is requested, if the pipe is off, output redstone to close the switch.) I hope you don't remove the switch pipes in a future update.

i don't think they are obsolete cause lasers and forestry machines always request power, no matter if they need it or not, switch pipes are a nice way of isolating them if they have no work