Hi guys just a quick intro Ant from New Zealand

[cteno4]

The main reason we use the chaseways for the wires and cables is so that they keep any tension being put on the cables, they just lay there in the chaseway. Also just keeps them out of the way from getting snagged, especially if they droop much. Also just easy to pull wires out and add ones later, once you bundle the cables with loop clips or zips its a pain to add things or just move a cable a bit to get more on the other end. Once cables break out of the chaseways then we use small loop clips and zips to dress the individual cables as needed. 

 

You should be able two wire the layout so that you only have to connect from one side of your bridge module. You could get sophisticated and have springy pins or pads on the module that presses on pads on the other module to make all your connection, but thats a bit of a fiddly ting to engineer well. You can easily use an automobile/motorcycle connector. They are pretty robust and you can find all sort of ones from simple to very fancy and they can take up to a couple of dozen pins. Pins can take way more voltage and amperage than you will ever use on the layout. Only problem is some can be a bit tight to pull apart. Usually the first mm or two of pin connection are easy and the last couple of mm with the clip being locked is where it gets tight. But since this is not getting any stress just a pressure fit of the pins for a mm or two would do you fine. They are pretty cheap and you can always try some to see how they work for you. There are also the universal power pole connectors that have taken over most all modular train formats. But they are not cheap and i find them a bit cranky to pull more than 4 connectors ganged up. It is a modular system so you can just keep adding more connectors onto a line of them as needed.

 

any scenery along your edge is going to get some good wear and tear dropping in the module. Folks tend to put their ends of the removable module at a slight inward angle like 10 degrees off vertical so the module sort of slips in like a wedge adn when you first drop it in the bottom of the drop in module is smaller so easier to hit the hole in the layout. This helps not hit your scenery ends. 

 

To help thing line up really well is to have your lip attached to the layout modules that the pullout module rests on have a couple of pins to make it really lock in place [one on each side]. You can easily do this by clamping the module in place and drilling holes up thru the lip under the edge of the drop in module up into the edge framing of the drop in module [or add an extra backing piece if edge frame is not thick enough for this]. Drill the holes at the exact size of some wood dowel [ie tight fit in a drilled hole]. Once holes are drilled pull the module out and you can then drive some dowel pins into the holes in the supporting lip piece with glue and a nail pin thru it. Then you can sand down the dowel some in diameter so the module just slides over them and locks thing right in place. The trick to doing this though is drilling those holes as vertical as possible so the pins slip in well. They only have to stick up like 10-20 mm to hold the module in place. Just to lock the module with perfect alignment for the tracks. Once module is all locked down like this then lay track across and it should keep pretty good alignment. Pull out modules like this are a bit of work to get them to fit well like we discussed way back.

 

One thing you can do for module scenery edges like this is to create a little strip of scenery on a plastic strip you can just drop in after the module is in place to cover the seam. You can make it like a T shape to have a finger that holds it in a slot cut right at the junction or to one of the edges. This will help keep the strip in the right location as well has help it to keep stiff. Dropping in a light weight strip will bash up any of the matching scenery less. You can also make the edges be more of a random wander that you could hide easier than a straight line with our eyes always zap to no matter how hidden. You can try to make visual sense of this by putting something like a roadway or fence along this transition line so if your eye does catch any of the module joint its covered up by the fact there is something our visual memory says it should be a straight line there.

 

Great if you can start dropping track in to play with the layout and make sure it’s all how you want it before securing it. Might fine a few tweaks you want to do in the plan or for any train issues.

 

Keep on going it’s looking great! 

 

One thing on the whole layout, did you make it so that the modules could come apart easily if you move? If so then you may want to think about leaving a couple of inches of wire for each module junction on any buss wires going around the layout so you could clip the buss and reattach them once moved. You need some extra wire to do this easily. Having a bit of spare wire looped up at the end on buss wires is just a good idea just in case you need to reroute a buss and need a bit more wire, use easier than having to splice in more later.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

BTW a way to help drill holes vertically like the pins for the drop in module is to use a drill jig with your hand drill. The chucked jigs that slides like a drill press work well to sink vertical holes on things you cant put into a drill press and make holes more vertical than you can with your eye and trying to use a square. They also help prevent you from wiggling the drill at all and enlarging the hole larger than the bit. These cheap ones work fine for this level of work for a few holes here and there. Nice ones cost a couple of hundred bucks.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[MrLinderman]

I like the idea you suggested Jeff of the scenery "strip" that is placed in after the bridge is attached, that would certainly reduce the wear and tear, and having parts of the strip overlap the edges would be a very effective way to "hide" the gap.

[cteno4]

Problem is you will need a few of them between track pieces. Maybe a road with the joint right at the edge would help on one side to hide w.o much scenery stuff.

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Thank you for your advice on this MrLinderman i think its something i should have put more thought into, but hey its fixable and i will take your advice on board cheers

[Antnz]

Cheers Jeff i do actually have the bridge made and some electrics for wiring it up but as i said to MrLinderman i think i should have given it more thought, i think i can wire it up better with some well placed and soldered copper sheet. A few more photo's showing my track placement,  ive already found a few problems one has been sorted by simply putting some shorter peaces of track in so i can fit a double track engine shed in. Ive also decided i don't like the bridges over my river i quite like metcalfes card kits for viaducts i will look at those instead

The first photo is where my engine shed is going it didn't fit, but simply putting some short sections of track in seems to have solved that.

[Antnz]

And yes i like the idea of having a strip of scenery grass maybe to simply insert into where my gap is sounds good and nice and easy, i will look at how hard it will be to cut the plywood as its in place and perhaps re scribe a section to glue in, its a weak point though so will have to be good and strong 

[Antnz]

Sorry Jeff i missed one of your questions ( One thing on the whole layout, did you make it so that the modules could come apart easily if you move? ) the answer is no i havent, i don't intend moving Ive been here in this house for 40 years know and im stuck like glue hahaha , i know its a question that come up a lot and i did intend to try and make modules of 4 feet sections which Ive done but the track never seemed to hit the right section, Ive also now overlapped the joints when gluing the polystyrene down. if i do move at any time it will be to a retirement home i think and im shore they wouldn't want this size of layout there. its a good question and one most people im shore should keep in mind when building the base and modules just encase there situation changes for any reason.

[Antnz]

These are what i got to wire up the bridge section and track, the plates were to go either side attached to the main frame with the plugs connecting to the wires under the bridge and simply plugging them in when the bridge was in place. Im know having second thoughts and wondering if simple copper plates either side would be better, im sure it would only take a second to plug these in once the bridge was in place though.

[cteno4]

Sure those should work fine, just be 4 to pull/plug. Those banana plugs are easy to plug/unplug and heartily made. 

 

Copper strips should work, Main thing is making sure all of the contacts keeps in good contact at the same time once in place so some sort of spring to them to keep all in contact at once. A thin layer of foam rubber behind one set could do this. Three are some spring contacts out there, but probably more effort than it’s worth. Trying to align something up like your banana plugs would take some work of drilling mounting holes in two blocks clamped to getter for perfect alignment, but may just be too much stickiness when you go to pull the bridge. Our club experimented with creating magnetic contact pins between modules for one of our sectional layouts so we could have just a bit of play so did not have to have absolutely perfect alignment and they self locked/plugged together. It worked well in experiments, the main issue was getting our wire leads in good contact with the magnets [neodynium magnets that are nickel silver plated]. Magnet to magnet was no resistance at all just hard getting contact out to the magnets thru the plug system [we were using bolts] as these were not perfect conductors and we has a tiny big of voltage drop across them.

 

Bridge modules are a challenge. I would experiments some with what you have. Pin down some tracks on either side of the module and layout to meet up and ten see how well it drops in and comes out [ie do the bridge module ends hang up on the track much and how good the alignment is and how well the track alignment is and how much more you will need to do to get it well aligned and easy to remove and put in.

 

If the current ends are not working right id suggest constructing new ends for the module and layout ends separately. Much easier to make a clean and tapered end joint along with drilling holes thru pieces to make some alignment pins. Then just graft these new ends pieces onto the ends of the layout and bridge module. You can just chop one end of the bridge module off to shorten it if needed. Slightly tapered ends will make it much easier to drop in and pull out the bridge module without snagging track ends or scenery and you can make it a very tight gap if you engineer the ends well. Making them separate you can do much better tolerances and then just adjust their mounting onto the ends with some very thin shims to fit up as best as possible. This will also help your alignment. Also engineering a vertical alignment pin into each side can really help keep perfect alignment once dropped in place. Tapering the alignment pins helps it slide on easily but then pop to exact fit once all the way down.

 

LOL good to hear you intend to stay put! I couldn't remember you probably mentioned that sometime a while back. I just always raise my hand on this after helping friends tear apart large installed layouts when they moved houses, a huge sadness to go thru. No worries then in wiring wire away in place! Murphy’s law of layouts if you build one built in you wil have to move about the time you are seeing a real layout coming together! Corollary is if you build it to be able to come apart you wont have to move…

 

Very fun seeing track in there. Great to start to really visualize the layout!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Thank you Jeff, yes im looking really hard at this bridge section know its a challenge, it does line up really well and is locking into place firmly and very level so im sort of not wanting to mess with it to much. Having said that the gaps do bother me but i will look at your previous advice and try an insert of sorts to hid the join. I will look at how to cut and insert a overhanging lip on either side of the bridge.The D handles in the above picture are for either side of the bridge to make life easy when lifting it in and out. Im glad you like the banana plugs i think i will stick with them im sure it would only take a second or two to connect them each time they are in use. Yes getting some track down does make it so much clearer in fact im know wondering if to do away with the single track and bridge, i will live with it for a day or two and then decide. Thank you again for your advice and encouragement cheers'

 

Tony

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

good keep playing with it as long as you can here to see what might help on any issues before you set things too much in stone.

 

going to be fun watching this come together! I can see you having a lot of fun sitting on a swiveling chair going round and round with your trains!

 

Cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

I had a quick trial run with the track all connected, the train ran well until it got to the double turnout ( Tomix ) it stopped at each double turnout which is about half way round the track each way, i intend to have more dropper wires connected this was just using the one connector which may have not been enough to power my train round, but what im wondering is does the double turnout need to be wired up to carry power round the track just out of interest.

[Antnz]

Wow its bean two years tomorrow that i started this does it normally take this long, Ive enjoyed every minute well nearly every minute. I must say I'm glad i didn't hurry though as so much has changed from my first design and know I'm laying track temporally im finding that im still tweaking things as i go.

[Antnz]

I think Ive fixed my problems with the gaps on my bridge section. Firstly i sanded all sharp edges and well waxed the ends of both the bridge and the baseboard until the bridge slide in smoothly, then i added the handles to both sides central, this has made handling the bridge a lot easier and it now slides in a lot more level. I had some vinyl left over from another job which i cut to fit the section i want to hide and when ballasted and grass added should be fine, i hope the photo's will be self explanatory.  The vinyl is of course only glued onto the bridge section edge and overlaps onto the baseboard sections. I will of course be adding a fascia board at a later date to protect the polystyrene and tidy things up, which will of course hide the joints on the bridge section as well

Edited Thursday at 03:11 AM by Antnz
Adding more information

[Antnz]

As im getting close to laying track i am know looking at the wiring so i have a few questions, sorry guys, firstly for my bridge section do i solder my wires as close to the end of the track sections as i can ?? within an inch or two perhaps ?? i am not very electrical minded and in my mind as soon as i cut the track i cut the power between them Evan though im connecting them with wire, there is still a break between them be it very small. and secondly for my droppers or feeders ( plan attached with what im looking at, blue dots represent dropper wires ) i am intending to cut the plugs of the feeder wires as they seem rather big and awkward to place between the tracks and just solder the tinned ends to the tracks, i have divergence cords numbers 5812 tomix of course i am hoping i have enough and extensions, what im hoping for is some pointers am i heading in the right direction do i have enough feeder wires marked or in fact to many perhaps ??

I have some viaducts to build before i can lay track as the track runs over them so i have plenty to go on with but i wanted to sort the wiring out as well before i get ahead of myself.The blue dots are just an indication of what i am thinking i need and not at this time accurate

[UnfinishedKit]

It doesn’t matter where on the track section you place the droppers, electricity goes everywhere, so do it where it is most convenient. No need to use Tomix wire either. I’d just use some sensibly sized multi stranded wire, say 0.5mm2 and run it back to some screw terminal bus bar.

 

something like this

 

https://www.jaycar.com.au/machined-brass-busbar-8-way/p/SZ2003?srsltid=AfmBOopzFWDb3D80kA_6wYHkMfdEcsvmNI5H0_Jl7FyA4Xw1ST0P5imTgrA&gStoreCode=908

 

now as for how many, it depends. What I don’t see on the plans are where you are going to isolate sections.
 

Are you going to be running DC or DCC?

 

If DC How many controllers. I assume at least two for the two loops but you could have a bunch more if you wanted to do simultaneous operation on the branch lines or in the yards.

 

with dc or DCC are you going to want to do block detection or block signalling?

 

if you want to preserve optionality then the best bet is to put insulators at every join at the trailing ends of every set of points and maybe also at the halfway points in your plain line sections. Either you can wire them back to bus bars, as above or you can wire them through a control panel and have switches to enable and disable each track section as desired. 

[cteno4]

As Unfinishedkit mentions, where you put your droppers depends on DC or DCC and other things, so let us know your plans there.

 

On soldering the wire to the track, anyplace on the track that is convenient is fine. Any loss of voltage will occur at the track joints not where the solder joint is.

 

I have generally soldered to the center of the rail section unless it’s not convenient to drop a feeder at that location. I just cut a slot in the roadbed directly under the rail, then flux and tin the bottom of the rail and the wire end then just fuse the wire to the rail with a quick iron heating. I then drop a dollop of glue over the slots, solder joint and up over the insulation end some. This makes for a very strong connection so if the wire gets a yank at some point it wont get broken. The weakest point in a joint like this is on the big of bare wire between the end of the insulation and the solder joint to any pulling/bending. I cut the slots with a little 3mm dremel milling bit in the drill press. I put the fence so the track is lined up so the bit is right under the rail. Then run the bit at high speed and lower it in a half mm and move the track back and forth to cut the slots in a few passes. Much easier than trying to cut it by hand with a roto tool as the bit tends to wander easily in the plastic. If you don’t have a drill press you might think about one as they are a very handy tool in model railroading and small ones are pretty cheap and compact or usually easy to find second hand or potentially a press that you can pop your hand drill into.

 

Usually feeders are like 22-18g wire and pretty short like 30-40cm and then they connect into a bigger gauge buss wire of like 12-18g to go to the power source. Little terminal blocks are great for this. The euro terminal blocks are cheap and easy to use and you can cut them up to how many connections you need at anyone place. You can put buss wire in one side and out the other and add in your feeder to the buss end on either side. There are a ton of little non solder connectors and splicers like this. Some dont use screws and just have a little spring loaded or pressure lever to hold the wires and let you do things quickly. only downside is they may not hold wires quite as tightly and could have a tiny bit of voltage drop, but should not be a problem on a layout this size at all.

 

wire has gotten pricy over the last few years so shop around some. Many times you will find 14-20g copper speaker wire cheaper than regular copper wire. All the same stuff. I like the speaker wire that has each wire individually insulated and colored then with an outer sleeve. This makes it easy to cut the sleeve to expose the individual wires and strip each cleanly. Speaker and line cord that have two wires moulded into a single piece of insulation can be hard to split and strip the ends cleanly as easily and also tend to be harder to determine polarity easily.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Thank you guys for your answers and already a little clearer. Yes my layout is DC and with two controllers. I have a bunch of 22 gauge black and red combined multi strand wire i bought yonks ago and a heap of speaker wire, one lot of speaker wire seems way to thick the other seems comparable to 22 gauge.

Ive quickly drawn this up to post here have i got this correct to see if im on the right track

And im sorry i don't think ive got a handle on the isolation sections

[Antnz]

Thanks Jeff and thank you UnfinishedKit, jeff i like the idea of cutting a section of the track to solder beneath the track then just filling the gap later sounds good, i didn't see that theirs a lot of room on the side of the track and very noticeable as is the Tomix feeder plugs. Also if i make a mess under the track by melting anything its not going to be seen i like it thank you.

[cteno4]

Yep it works well. Soldering to the side [i’ve done it a few times to Unitrak when i didnt want to rip the track up] is visible and ive found more prone to melting plastic roadbed than to the underside. I make the cut just a tad wider than the bottom of the rail so that plastic is not quite touching the sides of the rail to help with melting issues. I paint the rail with some flux first and tin the bottom of the rail area well. Then tin the end of the wire [prebend it to an angle like 7mm from the end so the wire fits into the slot easily]. Then you can just put the wire in the slot solder to solder and hit the wire with the iron tip [a wedge tip is best here not a pointy tip to get more surface area along the wire] and it will all fuse quickly and pull iron off right away.

 

Sacrifice a piece of track and just practice some and you will find you will get adept at it after a few tries. Soldering, especially like this situation, is all about practice!

 

The drill press works well as a little mini mill to cut very clean slots.

 

Tomix track has a bit less height under the roadbed than Unitrack, so check that your wire has enough room under the track to fit, you may need to use individual wires with thinner insulation. But much of your track is over foam so i guess most places you can just cut out a little depression if needed.

 

jeff

[Antnz]

That's fantastic thank you Jeff you make it sound so easy, yes i have plenty of spare track i will have a play, did you see my wiring diagram ?? does this work am i heading in the right direction ??

[cteno4]

Yes its pretty easy to do, just take some experimenting and practice. Next time a make some power drops ill take pictures and post.

 

Ok looks good, simple 2 throttle control with throttle on each loop. Looking at where you put your blue dots i assume you are going to isolate all your sidings and mainline blocks and do block wiring with each siding and mainline section being controlled by a switch on a control panel? If so you wont really need a buss. Just connect a wire directly from the drop to the block control switch on the control panel [a few of the longer blocks you could splice a coule of feeders into the single power wire for that block]. Also doing it this way you can also use DPDT switches on each block to control which throttle is controlling each block or off. 

 

Other route is to only put power drops on your main line and feed each loop to each throttle and let the points power your sidings on and off.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Jeff you mentioned

( Other route is to only put power drops on your main line and feed each loop to each throttle and let the points power your sidings on and off. )

In my head i assumed that the points and turnouts did just that, any chance of you perhaps doing a simple drawing of the wiring of how this would look for me, no hurry im again just trying to get my head around the wiring as i get closer to doing it.

This way you have mentioned on wiring just seems easier to visualize or do some how, i think its because i had already got into my head that is what the turnouts did, that they shut the power of to the other track sections.

 

Also should i be looking at ordering some plastic track breaks or isolates that slide into the break in the rails if needed with this way of wiring, or perhaps theirs another way of doing it ass well.

 

Cheers

 

Tony

 

Edited yesterday at 12:06 AM by Antnz
Adding more information

[Antnz]

Jeff

 

I had a quick play and im glad i did thank you so much, this is so much cleaner looking and not very hard this was my first go so i lost a little plastic but i did as you said and went fast, ive taken a few photo's to show the difference with the Tomix connector and the wires underneath so much cleaner looking, it only took a few snips with the side cutters to remove the plastic from underneath the track and we were sorted

 

Cheers and thank you

 

Tony