I want to start running some Loconet cable for my Digitrax DCC system and I’m curious as to where others have found to be the best place to purchase it. It is just six conductor telephone cable. Can you buy a spool and install the end connectors yourself, or do you have to buy precut lengths?
Lowes, Home Depot for starters.
You can make them yourself. You are correct in what you need to accomplish it. They are straight thru connections.
If you know someone in the tele/data communications field, you could see if they would make up some for you. Depending on how many cables you need the cost of the crimpers could be a bit steep. But if you are doing a bunch for yourself and friends then it may be worth it. I needed only two cables for my layout, and was able to have a friend that I work with from time to time on office furniture installs make me up a pair. Just gave him a couple of dollars for the connectors. The wire was CAT5 that was too short for doing a run on a job, but good enough for what I needed.
Just be careful about buying 6 wire premade phone cable. Something about the wire position reversing on the opposite end. Pin 1 becomes Pin 6. Hope this helps you out.
Flat 6-conductor cable is the easiest to crimp, but twisted pair works okay. It’s just a bit more work to get sorted out when you a putting the end connectors on.
Allelectronics is a good source cable or supplies to make your own.
They sell ready made cable.
Or you can custom make your own to whatever length you need.
Wire
6 Pin Plug
Modular Plug Crimp Tool
Go to Home Depot or a good electroins shop (not radio $hack) and get an RJ-12 crimp tool and the connectors. and of course 6 wire cable… Get a few extra connectors, you’ll need them over time.
What kind of plug-jack combination does the throttle itself use? If it’s a standard phone plug, you might be better off getting a wall plate with phone jacks, and just using phone wire to connect the jacks, rather than going out and buying those expensive faceplates with the jacks in them.
I’ve got a Lenz system (hence my unfamiliarity with Loconet) and I bought half a dozen 5-pin DIN panel jacks for something like a dollar-seventy-five a piece, and tied them together with phone line. Now I’ve got a control bus with jacks every few feet for less than the cost of just one faceplate and jack.
Bruce:
The throttles use the same six conductor jacks as the control bus. I did look around for an inexpensive alternative but did not find anything acceptable.
If it’s an RJ12 as somebody mentioned above, then Radio $hack has them:
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2103653&cp
A hundred-foot roll of 6-conductor phone wire will cost you about $15 at Home Depot. These RS plugs mount into a modular face-plate that costs a few bucks (1, 2, 4 and 6-jack models, I believe.) HD may have the plates and jacks, too, but even at R$ prices this still beats buying those Loconet faceplates. Man, you’d have to be loco to do that.