I’ve read about modelers adding a tray below the layout to bring all the wiring to the front of the layout and allow soldering upright versus crawling under the layout. Has anyone done this or seen any pictures? I’d like to see pictures if possible! I have arthritic knees due for replacement and wiring under the layout is not in my future.
I’m older than dirt with bad knees. I run my wires around the perimeter of my layout. I drill holes where I need the wires to go then drop a pull line down from the top and grab it with a long grabber (36” is normally long enough). I pull the wires out and feed them through Telco “D” rings back to my control panel.
I space the D rings about 18” apart.
This shows a pull cord going through a 1” hole for pulling a ribbon cable for my lighting.
The D rings will handle hundreds of wires.
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Also I don’t do any soldering on my layout if I can help it. I pre-make my wiring with connectors on both ends so that they just plug in.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Soldering under a layout? Not me. I learned the hazards of that at age 6. My father was working under his layout with a soldering iron proped on a hammer. I was under there with him. I put my hand on it by accident - ouch.
I’m more a Sta-Kon and terminal strip kind of guy under the layout.
On top the layout I solder every rail joint and track feeders.
Sheldon
i hadn’t heard it described this way before.
The LION had posted a tip about hiding wiring behind the fascia
but your thought suggests hanging bus and other wires near the front of the layout and presumably dropping longer lengths of wire from interior parts of the layout that can easily be grabbed and pulled to the front where they can be attached to busses run to panels or other circuit boards
Having worked my entire working career (50yrs) in two-way radio communications the Telco way to run wiring has its merits, the D ring is a good one. I’m not fond of their punch blocks but their wire management is one of the best ever.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
What I remember, from an article in Railroad Model Craftsman many decades ago, is a guy who had what looked like large ping pong paddles (or very small pizza oven paddles?) that had the wiring mounted on them - plenty of extra wire so the paddle could be pulled out from below usings its “handle.” The paddle otherwise sat on a shelf like portion of the benchwork. The wiring itself used termnal strips.
I suppose a variant on that would be to use pull-out sliding desk shelves rather than a paddle which is only secured to the layout by the wiring it holds.
Maybe it was that same article or maybe I am combining two old articles in my brain - it might have been the same guy who made his own terminal strips using parallel rows of brass screws. Frugal.
Dave Nelson
Thank you for the replies!
I like Mel’s idea of working from the top down and fishing the wires to the front of the layout. GregC had a similar thought with guides for buss wires.
ith some forethought on my part, I could make that work! Mel, can you post a description and a picture of your quick connects? Sounds like a nifty approach to do work on a bench then quick connects on the layout!
This is for a future DCC layout (moving in a year) and want to do some preliminary testing of the approach. Isn’t there a maximum recommended length of feeders, something like 6 to 8 inches? It would be impossible to meet that standard if connecting to the buss along the front of the layout (unless limiting track location to only a few inches from the front). I suspect 12 inches would be common and some 18 to 24 inches.
Dave K mentioned an article that used movable paddles for the wiring. A nifty idea but again adds length to the feeders and buss line to allow moving the paddle out from the layout. Nifty idea for DC layout!
Sheldon, impressive wiring, well done! My layout will be much simpler and far less complicated to wire, thankfully as wiring must be done but is not a favorite task…
I have standardized on the .1”/2.54mm spacing header strips. I use both the round pin as well as the square pin (Arduino type). The round pin can be modified to polarized to prevent the wrong polarity from accidently screwing up things, or prevent the connectors being reversed.
You can press out a male or female pin and replace it with the opposite polarity pin. The header strips come I 40 pin single row and 80 double row. You can cut the connectors to any number of contacts needed.
https://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2017/12/december-15-2017-micro-connector-update.html
I have a slug of Arduinos driving signals, lights, and servos on my layout all using the header strip connectors. My 20 por
Brother Lion gave me the idea you’re talking about and which other posters here have done.
I work from the top of the layout. I drill the hole and drop the wires, then grab them from under the table and route them to terminal strips mounted behind the fascia.
If I need to work on any wiring, it’s easy to remove the fascia, and all the wiring is right there.
The terminal strips and solderless connectors were bought online for very little money.
Thanks for the excellent decription and link to your blog! Nifty, I like it! Do you use shrink wrap tubing on your connectors or just leave soldered connections as is given the distance between pins?
York, thanks for the very clear picture, excellent! I see there is a label for lights by the terminal strips. Do you use a similar approach for track feeders? Any limitation on maximum feeder length to the terminal strips? The wago connectors would work well with your pictured arrangement since I will mostly have two to three tracks at any one point on the industrial switching portion of the layout. Thanks!
Yes, I use the same system for the track wiring. My bus wire connects to several different terminal strips around the layout, and the feeder wires go out from the terminal strips.
My N Scale layout is fairly small, so I don’t worry about the length of the buss wire or the feeder wires.
I use Atlas flex track, and I soldered the track at each rail joiner. I also soldered the feeder wires to each section of flex track. It was overkill, but then I really don’t have anything else to use up my time.
One more thing – I knew nothing of any of this when I started. I learned the hard way that the terminal strips and the terminal connectors come in different sizes, and they don’t fit each other. It only cost me a few dollars to learn that lesson.
I don’t use heat shrink on the header strip connectors, too small. I do put a blob of Amazing Goop (silicon glue) on the solder connections not so much for isolation as a strain relief to prevent the wires from breaking loose.
I use two pin polarized header connectors between my passenger cars for lighting and Goop has served me well, I’ve never had a wire break off a connector.
Another advantage of using the round pin header strips is they are compatible with the NMRA 8 pin DCC connector. It’s much cheaper to make the NMRA 8 pin DCC connectors from header strips at around 2¢ per pin vs 50¢ and up for an 8 pin DCC conne