Let's see your backside!

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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I’m about to start creating far more complex control panels than I’ve previously attempted. While I have a pretty good idea how I want to do this, a picture is worth a thousand words… I’m hoping folks can post pictures of the back side of their control panels, so we can all see/learn ways of handling this…

Thanks,

Kris

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I don’t have a really good picture of the panel completely wired, but here’s a few of the panel as it was under construction.

This one is the panel frame as it was being assembled. The back piece (seen laying to the right) was installed after the panel face was slid into the grooves:

This next one has the panel face installed and populated. Wiring is about to start, then the back of the panel will be installed.

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Here is the back of my axiliary panel for the switchback up the moutain. Since I went DCC most is not in use. I don’t have a control panel for the rest of the layout, in that I opperate like the prototype, and go around with the trains and set turnouts as I go.

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I have a large DCC layout with remote control throttles so I have found that I don’t need a centralized control panel. Turnout controls are fascia mounted in the area of the turnout. The power supply and receiver sit on a flat shelf in the center of the main yard. This may not be the solution for everyone but something to consider.

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Actually it’s the same for me: large layout, DCC operated. The panels I’m building are strictly for the turnout controls (I’m not a fan of controlling turnouts through the DCC throttle - my last layout had that and it got old quickly…)

But with >80 turnouts, the fascia were going to get pretty crowded and confusing, so ‘regional’ panels are how I’m doing it…

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that looks real neat. jeffs looks like multicolored spagetti

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Mine does not! It looks like a multi-colored rat nest compared to that excellent work.

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Here’s the back of my panel, I still run DC:

And here’s the terminal block between the panel and the layout:

Rather then using, terminal blocks, I drove sheet metal screws and washers into the framing at the back of the panel.

And of course, I labled everything. Although, you can’t read them, I printed the labels on my computer, and glued them to the back of the panel, and under each screw on the terminal block. I printed enough so that I could attach labels to the wiring under the layout as well.

Nick

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Art… I can’t quite make out how you attached your power bus wires there. Some kind of clip?

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I’m embarrassed to show mine after seeing Art’s neat work, but…

I plan to neatly bundle all this someday. Really. [:)] Terminal blocks are used to connect track and Tortoises. Atlas relays are on the right. Digitrax Auto Reverse unit is on the left.

Here’s the front:

It’s a free standing console on wheels connected to the layout with a 4’ bundle of wires. Schematic was created in Xtrkcad then laminated. Green LED indicates through track is active, red indicates switch is thrown to diverging track.

I use DPDT toggles for Tortoises, but have some Atlas tabletop switch machines in the yard (because I had 'em) and I use push buttons for them (also because I had 'em). They (the Atlases) use the relays shown above. I also have some toggles in the yard area to kill the track there so that I can park locomotives with no power to them. You may be able to see the toggle with white cap on it… that switches that siding from run to program.

Here’s a wider look showing the control panel console in front of the layout…

I built a slide out shelf below the control panel to hold my Zephyr and 2 MRC “Jump Throttles.” When I built it, I thought the idea of a roll-around control console was pretty cool. In hindsight it’s just silly.

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One word of advice - it’s far easier to make all that wiring neat while you are doing it, then it is to go back and try to neaten it up later.

Here is the back and front side of our dispatcher’s panel.

And here are the backs of two of our local panels.

Being neat upfront makes your life so much easier if you have problems later. We put in cable tie anchor points before we even started wiring. Then put the wire ties loosely in the anchors to run the wires. When we were finished running the wire, we bundled them together with more wire ties and then tightened the cable ties in the anchors.

We run the wire to terminal strips at the base of the panel, all soldered. Then we run from the terminal strip to the switches on the panel, also soldering everything.

You don’t have to label the wire as long as you label the terminals at either end. Color coding the wires helps too when possible.

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Some pics of the back of the panel, not as neat as some here! I have added labels to help track wires.

The front!

Regards,

Nige.

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My good camera was in the shop while we were in the wiring stage, so there’s no decent pictures, but I’m not sure that a picture really is worth a thousand words when it comes to this subject. I’ve seen a lot of first class wiring jobs, on jobs in construction and IT, but that didn’t prepare me for wiring up the layout. I borrowed a page from residential wiring, and learned the rest by trial and error.

First step is to construct a wiring spool. We used a coathanger, big enough to hold two spools of wire, with a hook on top that allowed us to hang it from doorknobs or other projections, securely. You should be able to grab the end of the wire and pull out what you need without snags or tangles.We used 4 wire telephone cable for turnout control, and two wire speaker wire for power routing and DPDT switches, and ran each type in its own seperate harness. The process went something like this:

  1. Lay out the control panel on paper or the PC, so you know what will be where when you are running it. Figure out how you plan to access the backside for maintenence and upgrades. With these two points in mind, you can answer the two critical questions, A, where your exit points for the main harnesses will be, and B, how your main harnesses will run inside the panel.

  2. Do all your drilling first. Once you run wires through a hole, good luck enlarging the hole without tearing up wiring already completed. We kept the two types of wiring completely seperate, so we drilled two sets of holes at every benchwork partition and then again at the control panel point.

  3. Pull all your “home runs”, cables that travel from each device to be controlled or powered, back to the panel, one at a time, but in a group. We did the turnouts first, pulling wire into the layout from the spool hanger all the way to the turnout, with a foot or so of extra, leaving it attached to the spool for now. We then attached the far end to the turnout termina

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Now you tell me! [:-^] (Of course I knew that… just hurrying on to the more fun parts. – The ol’ “I’ll do it later” deal doesn’t ever seem to work so well.)

Jeffers_mz: Nice tutorial!

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