Thursday, January 05, 2006
Wiring
My orders from Maplin and Expotools turned up yesterday (in my experience both these companies always provide an excellent next day service and are to be recommended) so I made a start today on the wiring.
The first task was to decide on a colour scheme for the wiring. DCC calls for six wires running to various places:
J and K are the power lines to the track and point decoders. I’ve coloured these black and red using 7/0.2 wire;
U and V are the AC power from the transformer for point motors as well as the DCC feedback modules. If you don’t want either of these features they can be left out. I used blue and brown 16/0.2 wire.
R and S are for the feedback from the block detectors. Again they can be left out if you don’t want computer control. For these I chose also 7/0.2 wire, in yellow and green.
The size of wire I’ve chosen should be fine for a small N gauge layout, but a larger layout may need bigger cables.
After a few experiments with DCC the back of the command station was getting into an incredible tangle of wires, all of which where in whatever colour of wire I happened to have available. So I’ve started by attaching the correct wires to the back of the command station.
Then I’ve attach self adhesive copper tracking to the underside of the baseboard which will provide power for the J wire to the track. Droppers from the track will simply be soldered to the strip, which should save a lot of wiring. The K track wires will be passing through the feedback block detection modules, but if you where using a simple ‘two wire’ DCC system these could also be connected through a similar ‘bus’.
The next task is to make up some cables to feed the six wires listed above to various parts of the board - as well as making connectors between the two baseboards. I’ve chosen to attach 6-pin DIN plugs to the ends of the wires. Even though the layout will not be portable I also want to make it feasible to move it if I move house without having to tear everything up and start again.
The one final task of the day was to order some track pins from Hattons. When I placed the order for the track
something in my head told me I already had some. It was wrong. Fortunately they do a reduced postage charge on such small, easy to handle orders.