Well, for experimental purposes, I wired an atlas snap switch last night. First, what a pain in the butt. I don’t think I can do two dozen of those once I build my benchwork. So anyway, is there an easier way to wire the switches? I thought about manual, but I want to power just a few that are out of reach. Any ideas?
That depends how you wired them in the first place? If you are running three wires to each turnout then, yes there are several easier ways to wire them.
The first would be to run the center wire from each turnout to a common power supply and only run two wires from the control to the switch.
A second way would be to run only one wire from the control panel to the center wire of the turnout. From this they can be powered with DC by putting a diode on each of the other coils and run one to each side of a the power. OR, From the same center wire connection arrangement, AC power can be used by putting a diode on each coil and on the inputs to the electrical switch. Throwing the switch one way sends a 1/2 wave DC power to the turnout, throwing it the other way sends the opposite polarity 1/2 wave.
What’s so hard about running 3 wires to a switch machine? Unless of course the are all the same color wire! ssssshhhhh!
cf-7
That’s kind of what I was wondering. You can buy 3-wire cable all over the place, runs right back to the little control box (not the greatest things in the world, but they DO work) and you’re done. Two wires from the end control box to the AC terminals of your power pack and that’s it. The control boxes all gang together, the ears of one slipping under the screw terminals of the next.
–Randy
I guess I just don’t like wiring. Bummer. So far I have been using the five wire ribbon wire, but I’ll go out and buy some 3 wire strands next week and give it a try. Thanks!
5-conductor might be more common. Just ignore two, or pull off two and keep three. Use the other 2 for something else. Hopefully the wire you have has different colors for all the conductors (once called “rainbow wire” at Radio Shack). If it’s all one color - no wonder you are having problems. One side should have a rib or tracer of some sort, but underneatht he layout that can be hard to see. It’s far easier to use wire with different colors.
–Randy
Try using Cat5 communication wire.
You get control power to 4 turnouts (in the same area of the layout).
Then you just need a common single wire to hook up all of the middle terminals.
If you do this just make certain you get the stranded wire type. Someone at the club thought this would be a good idea, but used solid wire CAT5 cable. That was two summers ago. In that two years we have had more breaks on that set of wire than we’ve had on all the other wire in the layout in the past 23 years. Started using CAT5 stranded and have had no problems (we use it for tortoise motors).
If someone asks, the stranded type is typically referred to as patch cable wire - since it’s used to make patch cables that get moved frequently - somethig that would break solid wire. Solid wire is usually used for the behind the walls runs where normally it doesn’t get moved after installation. Thin solid wire like that is tricky to strip, and all it takes is a slight nick in the conductor and when you go to bend it around a screw terminal it will break off.
Outside of that, Cat5 network wire (actually, try to find some Cat3 leftovers, it should be cheaper and since we’re talking a DC signal to drive a switch motor, 10MHz vs 100Mhz frequency capacity is not a factor) is a bit on the thin side to use with twin-coil switch motors. It’s great for the 10ma draw of a Tortoise though. Plus it comes with 8 conductors - and a Tortoise has 8 terminals.
The OP was confused enough with 5 conductor wire. I’d stay away from network cable then. Both because it’s really too small for Atla sswitch motors plus it’s goign to be very confusing to figure out which wire is which - the 4 wires that ar white with colored strips tend to be hard to distinguish except with good lighting. And I say this as someone who has plenty of experience running network cabling, both at work and for my previous house as well as the current one.
Again - for Tortoises it is ideal - I’ve even seen where people glue a RJ45 jack to the side of the Tortoise to make a quick connect system. Solder the wires from the Tortoise to the jack at the bench, once the Tortoise is in place a simple cable made with RJ45 plugs and cable provides the connection, no soldering to the Tortoise under the layout. At the very least pre-attach the wires to the Tortoise before insalling it - and ALWAYS use the same color wire to the same pin, and DEFINITELY write down said color scheme in a notebook. That way you will always know that, for example, the orange and white with orange pair go to the
I use 4-conductor telephone wire for my turnouts. On my previous layout, I used a common center wire loop to all the turnouts, and I just think the single-cable phone cable is easier. It also means I only have to poke 1 cable through the 2-inch foam. (For this, I first run an ice pick down through the foam, then I take that out and push a pencil through. I pull out the pencil and the wire slips through easily. The 4-conductor cable at Home Depot was the cheapest solution, too.
I don’t recommend the Atlas pushbuttons. I’ve had a number of them fail. Sometimes, they fail in the ON position and the first indication is the smell of a switch machine frying. FYI, it’s not as pleasant as waking up to bacon sizzling on the stove.