Hello, i am in the process of setting up some rail yards and i want to supply power to them, and i see that i will need powered rail joiners for each rail yard section, this to me will cauz a huge over load to the dc slot on my power pack, if i have to connect p/rail joiners for ever section, so i am now thinking of installing some terminal strips, my only problem is, i have no clue, how to wire them up or what to connect where, can anyone help me or tell me, how i can wire up the terminal strip, a visual expliantion would help me best, but if not, im open to any ideas or suggestionm, its just that all the diff wiring talk confused me after a while,
Terminal strips are fine- but what I did was screw an eyelet (often used in picture framing) to the inside of my layout framing joists opposite each other and then attached heavy guage solid strand wire taut between them. To this I soldered a short piece of wire and attached the other end to the power pack negative. This gave me a ‘bus-bar’ to attach as many leads as needed to the different yard track negative rails. I did the same for the positive but put an on/off switch in between to isolate power to that track as needed. Terminal strips work the same way. Hope this helps.
when adding a yard to a layout you need to be able to select individual tracks by switching power to the one you want. power consumption is caused by trains not by powering tracks! terminal strips are indeed useful for making many connections to the same point, such as- earth return, live track, and so on. have a look at an atlas wiring book which explains many aspects of layout wiring. je new zealand
yes, i dont under stand the whole picture frame wiring? that seems confusing to me, espically in writing, i have the Complete wiring book by atlas, and they dont mention anything about how to wire a terminal strips, thanks for the advise, but i would rather go by the terminal strip, but i dont know how wire up the terminal strip? anyone stil know?
I just spent a ton of time writing up a big explanation and trying to make a drawing using the keyboard to try and explain it to you, since no one has yet. Unfortunately, the drawing got all screwed up when I tried posting it to the Forum.
Basically, using a terminal strip is just a neat, organized way of taking all those wires from your yard and twisting them all together along with a SINGLE wire which goes back to your power pack.
Feel free to contact me by email if you would like. Maybe I could send the drawing as an attachment or something.
Hang in there a little longer. I got your email but may not be able to get back to you with the info and the drawing I still have to make you until Monday.