Hi guys just a quick intro Ant from New Zealand

[cteno4]

Yep you got it. Lets you switch any block to either cab a, cab b, or off! About as versatile as you can get short of going to dcc 

 

basically its what you/I drew up just repeated the same for each block on the whole layout! Each block has both wires wired to the dpdt for power and is insulated on both rails on anll ends of the block. Just keep repeating all over the layout.

 

Biggest thing to figure out is where to put your blocks and where to put feeders in your block. Blocks are usually to isolate sidings and break up a large mainline into sections to help with operations. You could be running a train on the mainline but need to bring a train out of yard onto the mainline for a bit while you transfer it to another track. You could keep the train running on the mainline while you use the other cab to bring the train out and back into the yard on the mainline briefly.

 

for the power feeds you want those spread out well and strategically placed on either side of points or double crossovers as needed.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Jeff have i done away with running a 18G bus wire around my layout under each track inner and outer using the block cab method ?? or am i still connecting my cab control dropper wires to the bus wire somehow ??

I hope im explaining correctly

 

Tony

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

Yes using a buss wire for the inner and one for the outer is how you would wire the layout for point power control, wiring the mainline for each loop to its buss and then control of the power to sidings off the loops is controlled by how the points are set.

 

for block wiring you just have a power lead from the control panel to each of your track blocks. This power lead goes from your power drop on the track for that block back to the DPDT switch on the control panel. This should be 18g wire as you will have some running a long distance and better to have a bit beefier wire for power transmission over a distance. 

 

If you have a block with a longer piece of track you may end up doing 2 or 3 power drops from the track within the block that all connect to that block’s power feed from the control panel dpdt that feeds it power from one or the other throttles.

 

Here is the basic wiring for each block on the layout

 

• Power drops from the track on each block [this may be more than one]. These are the 20 or 18g soldered wire drops from the underside of the tracks. These leads only need to be about 12” long.
• connects to one side of a 2 pole terminal block under the layout. You can just cut those 12 block terminal blocks into six 2 pole terminal blocks.
• other side of the terminal blocks you connect your main power feed wire [best 18g] that runs all the way back to just outside or inside of your control panel.
• at the control panel you can mount 12 pole terminal blocks and connect your pair of power feed wires to 2 terminals
• on the other side of that terminal connect a short piece of 18g wire that runs into the control panel to its DPDT switch
• at the DPDT switch you solder on the end of the short wire to the center poles of your DPDT switch.
• Throttle A and B are wired to the top and bottom pairs of terminals of the DPDT switch. This just requires wiring a bunch of short pairs of wires from one spot on the control panel that all connect together at one end and that is attached to the throttle lead. The other ends go to top pair of terminals on each DPDT switch. Then repeat with a bunch of wires from throttle B to the bottom pair of terminals on the DPDT switch

Here is a diagram from track to throttle with the terminal strips in there

Here is the diagram for wiring a long block track with multiple feeders

here is the wiring of a couple of dpdts in the control panel.

 

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

fixed the third graphic i had reversed a polarity

 

jeff

[Antnz]

cheers Jeff, yes this must be sinking in ive just picked up on the reversed polarity

 

Thank you for clearing up the bus wire question for me yes this is all a lot clearer, i will spend some time doing a comprehensive diagram and leave you in peace again, im sorry i will be back to get your ok once you've looked it over

 

Thank you for spending your time on me again

 

Cheers Jeff

 

Tony

 

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

no worries at all. Doesnt take much time at all and happy this is helping you figure it all out and get er done! Diagram scribbles only take a minute or two, but I shouldn’t have been watching tv while i responded as i flipped those wires!

 

when you go to wiring all this up its mainly a matter of making sure you get all the polarities right with the throttles and the block power feeds on the DPDT switches. Throttles are pretty easy just do like throttle A to the top of all the switches and throttle b to the bottom of all the switches and just make sure to keep like black on the left and red on the right.

 

for the polarity on the power feeds from the blocks/tracks you want to be consistent and  like black to the outer rails and red to the inner rails [or visa versa]. For sidings you can trace which is the inner rail [ie the inside rail of each big loop] from it branching off of the mainline loop and same then with the outside. If you screw up at some point on one you can always just reverse the wires at teh terminal block at the control panel for that block.

 

same goes for blocks that may have multiple power drops just want to keep all those wired with the same color to each rail and not mix them or you will get a short. We can talk later about how to use your multimeter later to help test tings before you turn on power to each block to make sure its working correctly.

 

having the little terminal block at each power drop just makes life easy. Make all your soldered track feeds wtith like 25cm of wire and that will get you to under the layout and to the terminal block. Then you can measure out the long power feed wire going all the way back to the control panel to the terminal block there. This way you dont have to try to make one piece of wire to go from track folder joint to dpdt and you can do each step around the layout easily in phases.

 

to connect all the power feeds from the throttles to the dpdt you can just wire multiple feeds from the dpdt to a terminal and then back to one lead to the throttle. If you need to do multiple ones of these just use little jumper wires to multiple terminals from your one throttle power feed.

 

Basically you make one of these for each throttle to make your power feeds to each end of the DPDTs from each throttle.

 

Dressing all your wiring in the control panel is going to be a challenge and not have it a total bowl of spaghetti. You may want to just take a few DPDTs and add like 25cm of wire on all the terminals and mount the switches in a hunk of cardboard and mess which how best to dress the wires cleanly in the space. The wiring can be a limiting factor in how small you can make the control panel. Don’t just set a control panel size without getting an idea of how much the wiring takes up in space and being able to trace wires well. 

 

You might also get different colors for the power feeds from each of the throttles to the DPDT switches as well to help you easily see which is throttle A feed, throttle B feed, and block feed inside the control panel. The whole run from track to the DPDT for a block can just be the standard two strand Red/Black wire you have. Then see if you can find some different colors like blue/white and green/yellow to use for the throttle power feeds. You could do the throttle power feeds as individual wires if getting colored paired wire is hard. If you want to neaten each pair to a switch up then a couple little rings of heat shrink can help keep the wires together but allow it to move well. Using a larger piece of heat shrink to hold two wires together will greatly reduce its flexibility but short little chunks will do well. Since all the throttles feeds are essentially the same you can just grab one of each color and bundle the two with a few little rings of heat shrink to keep them together to the DPDT switches. Trying to use double stranded for the throttle fees may be tough splitting the back far enought o be manageable. 

 

Keep asking questions as things come up, no worries on bugging me. Glad its all coming in focus for you.

 

Cheers,

 

jeff

[Antnz]

cheers Jeff

 

Yes i was worried about bugging you but its becoming clearer so im hoping i will be out of your hair soon, except for the turnout wiring lol ( LATER )

Did you see how i wired the lift out bridge section ?? i was assuming i had a bus wire running to and from this section so i am now wondering if i have this wiring correct, i was going to plug it in either end connecting to a bus wire ?? i am now assuming it will be connected via a dropper wire in a block section, i will keep looking at it

 

any way cheers again Jeff i have printed all this out and will try drawing it up and think hard and concentrate on it for a while

 

Cheers

Tony

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

for the lift out bridge you just need to jump the power for each of the two tracks that go thru it to the block rest of in the adjacent module. I would not bother to try to do two sets of connections on both sides of the pull out module. Wire that last bit of the module then with another feed from around the other side of the layout. I diagrammed the power feed to those two blocks [one on inside loop and one on outside loop] long that is the end curve and across the pull out module and into the yard. You can run one wire around one side of the layout to get the curve and a jumper to the pullout section and the rest of the block on the other side of the pullout can get ged from another feed from the other side of the layout [you could reverse this if the lift out is already wired to jump on the yard side]. 

 

 

The blue is the power feeds going to outside loop block and the red is the power feed wires going to the inside loop block. Control panel could be anywhere just the example that for these two blocks you have to do power feeds coming from two sides if you have a single power connection between the pull out module and one of the adjacent modules.

 

make sense?

 

jeff

[Antnz]

I will read it a few times hehehe cheers Jeff

 

I have printed out your diagrams i only have black and white lol so im using pens to color them know it actually helps a little to picture the wiring as im doing it

 

Tony

[Antnz]

Jeff

Just one quick point question, as im looking at two control panels one either side of the layout, lets say cab A on the left and cab B on the right but yes wired together as you have shown, can i wire DPDT switches to cab A for that side of the layout keeping to the wiring instructions as we have discussed, but also do the same wiring DPDT switches to cab B for that side of the layout, so in fact we have a control panel and control in front or near each station or yard  

What im asking is for cab control to work do all the DPDT switches for block control have to be on the one power control

 

Tony

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

with block wiring every block of track on the layout is controlled by a DPDT switch that switches the power to that block from cab A or B or off. Doesnt matter where the track block is on the layout, if it’s on the inside or outside loop, or in a siding or yard or which control panels the DPDT is on. Its simply all blocks are the same in their wiring with the track power feeds going to a DPDT that is connected to cab A and cab B to choose from.

 

I think the cleanest option is to just split the control panels into two, one for the Upper side of the layout and the other for the Lower side of the layout. Basically the same block pattern as before but just split the end 180 curve blocks on each end into two 90 degree halves so one 90 can go into the upper and one into the lower control panel [yellow line shows the division of the upper and lower sides of the layout}. This lets you do full operations of the yard and sidings of each side easily. When you want to run trains around the two loop mainlines you will just have to set those mainline blocks to the desired cab on the appropriate block DPDTs on both of the control panels.

 

But this is a lot easier than one mega control panel that your ill have to operate half the layout over your shoulder sort of in reverse, have a large and very deep control panel to have the full layout on it, and be a lot of wires in one control panel.

 

 

Remember each red dot is a pair of insulated unijoiners to isolate both rails of each block. The green dots are power drops for each block [some blocks need more than one power drops due to length and/or crossovers and switches] with each dot having wires to each rail that then wires back to the center of its DPDT. All the blocks are wired the exactly the same no matter where they are on the layout on the inner loop, outer loop, siding or yard.

 

cheers

 

jeff