I have a handfull of circuitron signal animators and grade crossing detectors, some signals and associated IR or photocell detectors and a few “dummy” signal bridges, some wired to Tortoises others just hard wired to look pretty.
These are usually wired with anything from 20 to 32 guage wire and the Circuitron boards have nice terminal strips but when it comes to making field splices under the table, these wires are way too small for the smallest wire nuts.
I suppose I could go around and solder the connections and put heat shrink over the joint but that can get pretty tedious working overhead and some of the places are just too inaccessable.
So, I’m wondering if the telco or IT guys have anything to make splices in this fine sized wire. Right now I’m just twisting them and folding a piece of electrical tape over the joint but I don’t hold much confidence in the durability of that practice.
I use the small gray wire nuts for a lot of smaller wires, especially on tying in Tortoises. The bag says they need a minimum of 2 #22 wires to work. So if you have #20 or #22 wires together, they’ll work. It gets iffier with those small ones. I’ve stripped one wire extra long and bent it in half to “fatten” it. You could probably do this with the #22 wire first, then add the smaller wire, then the nut. So you can probably makes this work so long as one wire is at least #22.
Why not just take a short piece of heavier wire and twist it in with the finer wires when you are making the joint. That should fill the wire nuts quite nicely. If you want to make the joint bullet proof you could put a piece of heat shrink tubing on the other end of the heavier wire, but personally I think that might be overkill.
I use European style barrier strips under my layout. They are a white plastic strip that you insert the wire in and tighten the screw. No wrapping the wire around a screw. Each segment of the barrier strip can hold several wires. No twisting of the wires, no soldering, no wire nuts. You can get them from Radio Shack ( you may have to visit several RS stores to get what you need) or you can get them from allelectronics.com at half the price of those at Radio Shack.
But, a better answer might be “plan ahead.” I use a lot of terminal blocks (also called barrier strips) under my layout, screwed to the benchwork. This allows me to do all the soldering for circuit boards, etc., on the bench, and then I can just attach the units beneath the layout with screw terminals.
I’ve also got a Walthers traffic light controller, which has a lot of wires going to it. I attached it to the underside of the layout with Velcro, so I can easily remove it to add even more wires.
The small screw type barrier strips are probably best for an under-layout implementation. For installing things in locos - the small pieces of the velobaord is probab;y the way to go. Do not use wire nuts on the ultra fine magnet wire commonly seen in signals, it will just break the wires off. Use the terminal strips so that the heavier (and it doesn’t have to be a LOT heavier) wire running to the control device doesn’t exert force on those fine wires.
Inside a loco, where you are maybe using surface mount LEDs with fine wires soldered on for effects lights, either the plain circuit board or, as an option, Ulrich has a small board with resistors that can serve as a convenient solder point plus keeps the required resistors all in one compact form.
Dave, Mike I have used the Ideal #71B wirenut and did just that, strip extra and fold over to get a better “bite” but when it comes to some of this teflon 32 or finer wire from signal bridges the stuff is just way too fine for wirenuts.
Rich, Mr Beasley. I have no problem soldering when I can get to it BUT as I near 60 some of the aches and pains from trying to contort myself under the layout gets old really fast. I will usually solder long pigtails onto whatever device I’m installing so I can thread the wires to a convenient location but some of the signal bridges I’ve made might have 8 to 12 wires coming out and I’d need an overly large hole to feed all that through plus I’m afraid the weight might tug one of those fine wires right out of the signal head.
I do have many of this type of terminal strip and they make things nice and neat.
Solder and shrink wrap is the correct solution. Going under the table is not an option, LIONS cannot work upside down, and do not want to get hot solder on their nice soft fur, so the object to be installed has about an 18" pigtail attached to it, and then you can sit along the edge of your layout on a soft chair, with plenty of light and make your solder connections there.
The LION uses 25 pair cat 3 cable for his distribution system and this appears at several panels around the edge of the layout. Him can solder to these like a gentlelion. You could use telephone type punch boars for this, but the LION cannot afford to purchase these and so just uses a board with nails in it.
This particular panel was installed long after the layout was built, the heavy cable was just strapped in place with a twist of wire that was stapled to the underside of the table.
Make one of these and make ithe back adjustable, up and down. Raise it up a little when under the layout. Maybe padded.
Yoo can nap, roll off of it when done. A little four wheel table for a beer, snacks, etc.
A light source with a clamp to clamp the light to the layout members. I have a ball cap with high intensity LED’s in the edge of the brim which helps a lot.
It is amazing what you can come up with when you wander through Home Depot or Lowe’s and let your mind run wild. I am fortunate to have two LHS shops, Local Hardware Store, not big box in my city. Even then, the big box are only fifteen miles away.
The telephone butt connectors (please do not censor, that’s what they’re called!) are great for linking phone-size wire (as mentioned in the item listing, approximately #26 up to #19) such as you might use for Tortoise switch machine power. The #30 and smaller wire often used in decoders, and the magnet type wire used in signals, they will not work properly.
I have used #44 magnet wire for LED’s and 1.5 volt bulbs and needed the smallest shrink at the device. Very easy to hide the wires in a cab. The other ends were connected to the decoder via the Vero strip board. The only reasonable way to do this. The same with the decoder wires and pickups in the loco which are usually #30.
Some people actually use a sold piece of copper clad PC board and use a Dremel with a cut off wheel to make separate strips for soldering tiny wires. Use your imagination.
Many years ago, I found at my local hardware store some very tiny ivory colored connectors. And I mean they were VERY SMALL. I could get a snug joint with two telco station cord wires (#22 & #24). Problme is that the hardware store is closed and I don’t think I have any of them any mroe since I demolished that layout about 20 years ago.
Many years ago my company’s phone/network vendor gave me a bag of the connectors shown in Mel’s link. He called them “chicklets”. A trade term I suppose. They worked great to but connect phone wire with a pigtail to add to a phone jack for my walk around throttles. Not sure how they would work with magnet wire. I’m guessing no.
I have a suspicion the ‘razor sharp teeth’ inside would get through the insulation on magnet wire, but that’s a poor substitute for the long intimate contact of a cigarette splice or the ‘twist’ inside a wirenut-type connector. For those you’d want to strip the finish on magnet wire more thoroughly…
I think I’d always consider soldering for 28ga or smaller – albeit with low temperature melting solder alloy…
