I’m impressed with the various methods many have used to organize their wiring – it’s clear who the elctrical engineers are. I’m just about to run my bus line and drop feeders for my current HO layout. The layout is a 12’x18’ around the walls with a central penisula. I’m running a 5 amp Digitrax Super Chief with the power supply centrally located so that my bus lines won’t exceed 25’.
On my last layout, I used 14 AWG romex for my bus, unsheathed the black and white wires, and then used black and white 22 AWG for the drop lines. For my turnouts I used CAT5 ethernet wiring, stripped it and separated the blue/blue-white, green/green-white, orange/orange, and brown/brown white pairs. These seemed perfect for my tortoises and facia buttons/LEDs. I controlled the tortoises through a Digitrax DS 64, which has 4 inputs, so I made sure to apply the same color pattern to each decoder: input 1) blue, input 2) green, input 3) orange, and input 4) brown. For my crossovers I used the same color combination for both turnouts, joined them in a barrier strip and then sent single wires to the DS64.
As I’m starting the wiring for my new layout, I was wondering whether I’m in need of a more sophicated organizational system. I use PSX cirtuit breakers for my 4 power districts and another to operate my turnouts. My layout will only have about 15 turnouts, a turntable, and I plan to add later on block detection, signals, and lights to structures/streets. In the past I attached color-coded zip ties to my bus to represent the each power district, and the CAT5 colored wires for the turnouts. Do you folks think I need something more developed?