I am working on a smallish shelf around-the-walls layout in a 6 1/2 foot x 11 1/2 foot room. I have a bunch of questions about wiring for DCC - and quite a few givens and druthers. Hope I won’t bore everybody to death with listing all my givens and druthers before you get to my actual questions.
Here is a drawing showing the layout track plan:
I am using DCC on the layout, using a inexpensive “oldish” command station - an MRC Prodigy, which possibly will be swapped for something with a better user interface at some later stage, but switching command stations isn’t really in the cards in the short term for financial reasons.
Chosing wire sizes and IDCs
I can easily solder track feeders to the tracks by just moving the track sections over to the work bench in good light and soldering the feed to the underside of the rails there.
But I do not want to have to solder track feed wires to the bus - I unfortunately did not do what I should have done - making my layouts in sections I could have taken out, flipped over and worked on the wiring underside easily under good light conditions. Next layout I will definitely make the layout in sections!
I do not really enjoy trying to solder wires above my head while working from beneath the layout. So being able to use IDCs for hooking the feed wires to the track bus is a must for me.
I have already done a “quick and dirty” wiring job to wire up enough tracks to allow trains to run around the main loop around the room, plus the little three track yard, so I can run a few trains in between, but before I continue wiring up the rest, I’d like to see if anyone is spotting any really bad mistakes I am making in how I am goi
I’m not an expert on this topic, but I’ll throw out a few things.
I don’t see a reversing section anywhere, so I’m not sure why you’d need an electronic reverser.
I don’t know why you’d need two buss wires running around the railroad. Never mind this comment. When you said buss, I initially though you meant a pair of wires in each buss. I realized you meant just two wires total.
Make sure that the buss wire is not connected to itself. It should have a beginning at the command station end and an end that just ends.
For the size of your railroad and the number of engines you think you’ll be running, in my opinion #14 wire should be just fine.
At first glance, some may say that you used too many insulators, but they look okay to me where you put them.
You don’t need to use so many of the “suitcase” connectors. What I’d do is install a number of terminal (barrier) strips at locations around the layout where you’d have a number of track feeders dropping through the benchwork. Then you can have one pair of wires going from the buss to the terminal strip, and then run wires from the terminal strip up to the track. The wire from the buss can be #14. From the terminal strip up to the track can be #20 in my opinion.
I just wired my first layout “legitimately” for the first time last month so I’ll share with you what I did:
Wiring - I used 14ga solid for my track bus and 20ga for my track feeders. I also used IDCs and terminal strips as the go between my track bus and track feeders. The IDCs accommodate 12-14ga and 18-22ga. I picked them up at Home Depot.
Here’s my wiring sequence goes:
14ga track bus → IDC
IDC → 18ga (stranded)
18ga → Terminal strip
Terminal strip → 20ga (stranded) track feeder
20ga track feeder to underside of rail
I found the IDCs very easy to use and they have worked great so far.
Turnout wiring - I switched over to Fast Track (FT) turnouts with live frogs and use Caboose Industries (CI) 220S ground throws to switch the polarity of my frogs. The CI ground throws are also connected to the terminal strips. The frog wire and the center pin wire coming off the ground throw are connected to an isolated pad on the terminal strip. It works very well this way and everything can be connected/disconnected via the terminal strip. I would HIGHLY recommend terminal strips as they would come in handy troubleshooting your layout for shorts later on.
Insulation joiners - I don’t use any insulation joiners on my 4 x 8 layout. Because my FT turnouts have live frogs, the rail is already isolated before and after the frog. I tacked my track down with DAP latex caulk and only use rail joiners to maintain alignment and some electrical connection.
Stein, I hope that helps. I like your layout design.
Leave the 14 gauge feeders alone. They are in, and won’t hurt anything. Make the new feeders smaller gauge, 18-20 works fine. I have one of the automatic type one-handed wire strippers, which also can be used for tapping into the bus very nicely. Just put it on the wire, at the appropriate gauge size, and squeeze. I then wrap the feeder wire around, and test. Many times I have the track power on, the system will let me know if I have made an error. Soldering the wires together usually goes pretty quick with a hot iron. When I did a bunch of wiring on the club layout, I would figure out which wires went where, tap the busses, and hook everything up. After testing, soldered up 6-8 at a time. Wasn’t too bad.
All the insulated joiners won’t hurt anything. I might suggest adding a few more in the 3-track yard, and feeders to the tracks. The contacts on the Peco switches do wear out after time, and powering a track off them may hasten their demise. It probably is just as easy to hook all the feeds to the bus as making jumpers.
1) Do you think I can actually get away from the hassle of cutting connections and soldering jumpers here and there on the turnouts to “DCC proof” them (which frankly looks like a nightmare for an inexperienced modeller) by just using insulation joiners on the Peco turnouts as indicated and otherwise trust my command station to cut the power when needed, or is that a fool’s futile hope ?
I think you shouldn’t have to modify the turnouts so much. Just put the insulated joiners in and you should be fine.
Is the auto-reverser really needed with the double-slip? Try hooking it up without, and see what happens. Digtrax makes a decent auto-reverser as well, just track power in and auto-switched out, with adjustment for trip current. Installed one on a Lenz
Wow - weird with the new user interface for the forums - I am still a little uncertain about whether it is an improvement on the old - guess we’ll get used to it in a few days.
Any model number or make or any such thing on the IDCs you used ? An IDC that works well for connecting 14 AWG to 18 AWG would work good for me too, but I am about 6-8 hours flight away from the closest Home Depot since I live in Norway over in Europe.
I hear you (and the others who have replied so far) on the terminal strips. But I didn’t totally understand that part about the CI 220 ground throws - you are using the ground throws both to move the points of the turnout, and to trigger a microswitch or some such thing to chose which track bus"polarity" gets sent to the frogs?
Right. But were you working under the table while soldering, or putting the layout on it’s side or something to work on things ?
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All the insulated joiners won’t hurt anything. I might suggest adding a few more in the 3-track yard, and feeders to the tracks. The contacts on the Peco switches do wear out after time, and powering a track off them may hasten their demise. It probably is just as easy to hook all the feeds to the bus as making jumpers.
1) Do you think I can actually get away from the hassle of cutting connections and soldering jumpers here and there on the turnouts to “DCC proof” them (which frankly looks like a nightmare for an inexperienced modeller) by just using insulation joiners on the Peco turnouts as indicated and otherwise trust my command station to cut the power when needed, or is that a fool’s futile hope ?
I think you shouldn’t have to modify the turnouts so much. Just put the insulated joiners in and you should be fine.
The ones I bought at Home Depot were manufactured by Buchanan (PN: 70027). They fit #14-16 AWG wire. (Sorry. I said #12-14 before.) The 3M version is #905. You can get them from Micro Mark.
Yes. It’s both a mechanical and and electrical switch. Here’s a diagram from the Fast Tracks web site that will best describe how it works:
I’ll go see if it is possible to order stuff from Micromark now - last time I tried their web site (a month or so ago) to try to buy something else, it insisted that I could live in pretty much any country, as long as my billing address in addition to having some valid country name (picked off a list of countries) also at the same time contained a valid US state name as part of the address
Oh well - I sent their customer service an email back then - maybe they have it fixed by now. If not, then I guess my billing address just changed to Minnesota, Norway or some such thing [:)]
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Yes. It’s both a mechanical and and electrical switch. Here’s a diagram from the Fast Tracks web site that will best describe how it works:
I came across this today while searching for some other things. While intended mainly for a modular layout, if you’ve built your layotu to take apart, even if it’s years before you do, it has some merit. No soldering underneath! And no suitcase conenctors (I STILL don;t trust them).
As already stated, leave the 14 awg feeders in. They don’t need to be this large but certainly won’t hurt. If the need to add more feeders arises, use 18 or 20 awg. Purchase appropriately sized IDC’s. Wrong size will cause trouble down the line. 567’s are for 12 ga main and 18 ga tap. 567 is too large for 14ga and will be loose on the conductor. 560’s should work for 14 main and 18 tap.
Don’t worry about the ampacity of 14 ga wire. Even 26 ga wire will carry 3.5 amps for a short distance. Decoder wire is 30 ga and it’s used for track pick up.
Reducing voltage drop is the reason for using larger wire. As long as your booster’s short circuit protection kicks out immediately everywhere around the layout, the wire sizing is correct.
Don’t create a loop with the bus wire. By all means try to connect the booster near the center with 1/2 of the bus running in each direction. This cuts the resistance in the bus in half and that means less voltage drop. Just don’t connect the ends of the bus together.
I like gapping my turnouts as well. That lets me add feeders as needed and avoid the inevitable short circuit when I forget to cut a needed gap.
I was under the table. Would have been easier to flip it over, but the layout was assembled and running. A creeper with a back would have been nice. Table is about 40" tall, just the right height to be a stretch when sitting on the floor, but too short to get any sort of chair under there.
The club used to have some Peco double slips. We never had any extra wires to the frogs or anything, worked fine. Well, they were a little sharp, a Shinohara double slip would have worked better. It was located on the inner main, formed part of a crossover to get the outer main into the yard.
Jees I feel stupid. I’m getting ready to begin work on a new layout and would like to go with DCC but all these technical terms are giving me such a headache. May just stay with DC - at least I understand how to wire a layout with DC.
Busses - IDC’s - so on and so forth may be beyond my comprehension. I thought I had it figured out once - you run a buss wire from the power source around the layout and run track power from that at appropiate locations. I think I can visualize how you can use terminal strips to get power from the buss wire to the track to limit the number of direct connections to the buss, but what the devil is an IDC.
It is those kind of joiners that you slip over two insulated cables and crimp shut with a pair of pliers, making a couple of metal “knives” slice through the insulation of the wire to make contact, without having to remove the insulation first.
Click on the link above to get a more detailed description.
No seriously, it’s Insulation Displacement Connector. Basically, a way to join two wires without stripping or soldering. Personally I’m not a big fan, I just strip a section of the bus wire, wrap the feeder around it, and solder. Quick, easy, and I don’t (usually) drop solder on myself. You need the right tools though, that little 25 watt iron used to solder decoder wires won’t heat a 12 gauge bus wire.
Indeed, I really enjoyed your discussion. Please tell me how you drew your layout. What computer program did you use? I’m desparate to draw my layout in the same form at yours. My layout is an around-the-walls in my basement, which measures 23 feet my 24 feet, with the staircase in the middle of the room. The benchwork is 2 feet wide along 3 walls and 5 feet wide along the 4th wall to accommodate the 130 foot turntable, 7 stall roundhouse, and 9-track staging area.
As I proceed with the DCC wiring, it has become strongly apparent to me that I need to develop a really good layout plan to keep track of all the wiring. When I start installing all the signals, the wiring is going to be a mess, so I must really develop a good drawing of my layout.
All the technical talk is about good wiring practice that should be used on DC and DCC layouts. When it comes down to it there are two wires feeding the track. Works that way no matter what type of power is in use–even full size.
Many have gotten away with substandard wiring on DC layouts because it can be more forgiving. Mainly because if the voltage drops down at the end of the block, you just turn the throttle up. That doesn’t change the reason for the voltage drop or that the wiring could have been done properly in the first place.
I divided my rectangle into 4 blocks. Each block gets a PDB (Power distribution board) that feeds a group of local feeders. Each of the 4 PDB’s run to one master PDB that contains the Power Bus which then goes to rails A and B on the DCC.
I will post again later this week when everything is in and running.
