bus wiring

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

OK I’ll bet this subject has been discussed to death but I am new in the hobby.

  1. As i under stand it Bus wiring is two wires (one for each side of the track) wired with short jumper wires every 6 or 8 feet to the track with a sioldering gun. Correct?
  2. This wire then terminates at my DCC unit so power is constant throughout the track. OK?
  3. This wire actually takes place of what I call a terminal track. (a single connection)
  4. My track is already laid and glued in place on a foam base. How do you wire without messing the layout up?
  5. IS there a illustation (for dummies) of this concept somewhere?
  6. What are the best turnout for DCC?

Finally…Thanks.

Gary

2

Gary,
The bus (or buss)_ wires are to augment the rail as a means of directing current to the trains. They usually run underneath the layout and parallel to the rails. The feeders are soldered as you state and can be routed thru roadbed and foam and plywood by a long narrow drill. I made mine from 1/16 welding rod. The buss itself can be stapled to the benchwork or routed thru screw eyes as shown in a recent MR mag.
Hope this helps,
BB

3

Gary,
If you receive the Model Railroader magazine, look at the November 05 issue. On page 96 there is an illistration of a track power bus with jumpers. On page 138 of the same magazine there is a helpful tip for you to get your feeder wires through the foam board. If you do not receive the magazine I highly recomend purchasing the issue in stores where available. Also I would recommend subscribing to the magazine because of all the great modeling information it provides for us new modelers.

Nate

4

First, is there a specific problem you are having that makes you ask? If not, then if your layout is currently run by one connection on a single terminal track, I don’t think it is big enough to need to worry about a bus. Just connect the DCC unit to the terminal track like you did your normal power supply, and run.

If you do have multiple terminal tracks, nothing says you couldn’t hook the bus to them instead of directly to the track. The only difference would be that the wires are screwed to the terminal strip rather than soldered to the track.

I’ve been through several (ummm 7?) DCC conversions on major layouts. Most of the time there are no problems (and even then the problems I’ve encountered were unique to the particular DCC system not the layout wiring). DCC is basically easy. All the DCC problems people talk about are the exceptions that get much more discussion than they deserve. All that talk makes it sound complicated and hard. It isn’t. I can also say that almost everyone has way over-engineered their DCC wiring. Our club ran a 10 gauge looped power bus. The only time that much capacity might be needed is if we had nose to tail locomotives over the whole layout.

5

Wiring for DCC is specifically covered by Alan Gartner on his website. You can get the what to do, the how to do it, and the why you should do it here: http://www.wiringfordcc.com/wirefordcc_toc.htm

You can also get a lot of technical DCC stuff at the website also. I use almost all of his recomended practices (I don’t do the lightbulb trick, but many do). Hope this is helpful.