I bought some Busch crossing signals from Walthers. I haven’t hooked them up yet. But I took them out of the package and examined them. They have a bunch of copper, uninsulated wires hanging out of them. The wires have no insulation on them, but appear to be laquered. Is this sufficient? They look like they would short out if hooked up. Can anyone shed some light on this. Thanks.
It is probably magnet wire. Magnet wire is insulated with a thin coat of transparent lacquer. It is quite robust believe it or not. It is used in motors and transformers (and you guessed it! electromagnets) You will need to scrape it off the ends to solder. I use the edge of a knife blade. Test with an ohmmeter to be safe.
Good luck
Karl
The laquer is the insulation. It’s the same way motor windings are insulated.
To connect them to regular wire, you have to scrape off the last quarter inch of that laquer and solder to the new wire extention and insulate the joint with shrink tubing.
No, they don’t short out. I’ve got a set and have already tried them out. Using the laquered wires for hookup is a real pain if you need more space between the two signals since it’s not the same as just extending a normal insulated wire. Luckily, Posi-Tap’s make it pretty easy compared to soldering.
You can buy that wire in rolls if your building your own signals. Comes in real handy for running multiple wires in thin tubes.
OK Thanks for the info. I figured they were laquered, but I didn’t think it was sufficiently insulated. Never seen any railroad accessories with that kind of wire before.
Also, I have a set of Tomar crossing signals, which are much larger then the Buschs. Both are supposed to be HO scale. Why are the Tomars larger than the Buschs, if both are HO scale?
If you think those are bad, take a look at the Life Like HO ones.[:-^] Don’t know why different companies make drastically different size signals.