i’ve acquired my track, locos, a few structures and rolling stock for my new layout. dc locos using atlas true track. 4x8 or 6x10 consisting of 2 rectangular loops using ho atlas true track, outer loop 22" r and inside loop 18" r, using flex 83 for interior trackage, small yard, sidings for industry and a turntable/roundhouse and two tracks for diesel maintainence. i’m ready to build benchwork and begin wiring.
looking for a good source to teach me to wire this layout . kalmbach has two but havent found one in person to see which is the best for my application. any recommendations on these books or another source?
For a really simple explanation on wiring see http://www.atlasrr.com/wiring.htm The Atlas wiring book listed explains the basics quite nicely, but does so using Atlas controls as black boxes. It doesn’t explain how the Atlas controls work internally so that you could easily substitute toggle switches in your own control panel. But otherwise, the Atlas will show wiring diagrams for layouts similar to yours.
The Model Railroader project railroads of the 1960s (PH&C, Ma & Pa, SP, etc) would devote one monthly episode of the project describing how to do DC cab control wiring in pretty good detail. Perhaps you can locate one of these back issues in an LHS, at a show, or in the library. There may be some later project railroads that had this info, but I don’t think they carried as thorough an explanation. Then my memory is failing me more often, too.
I don’t think Kalmbach still prints any books specifically about DC wiring - they want to push you into DCC. There may be some out of print copies available.
Kalmbach publishes 2 wiring books, “Basic Wiring for Model Railroaders” by Rick Selby, and “Easy Model Railroad Wiring” by Andy Sperandeo. As I’m a newbie, I have both books, and as the names imply, Andy’s book is the more detailed of the two. His book discusses both DC and DCC. In addition, if you’re planning on doing DCC, there is a great website, wiringfordcc.com which is very detailed and a great source of info. and gives much more detailed specific DCC information.
