Hi guys just a quick intro Ant from New Zealand

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

Hey great, i forgot tomix track has all those little square openings makes it really easy to cut them out! Looks like you got it on the first shot! After a few you will be whipping them out.

 

there are two main ways folks wire DC layouts like this. One is the old fashioned block wiring where you isolate sidings and large sections of your mainlines with insulating joiners [that you replace the metal inner joiners with]. Then you wire power to each block via a switch to turn power on or off to that block/piece of track. You can also use a DPDT switch to switch power to that section to either of two throttle or off completely. This give you flexibility by being able to control each block of track how you want to from a control panel [folks usually do a schematic of their layout and put the switches on each block on the diagram and each switch is up throttle 1, center off, down throttle 2.

 

the other way is the usual japanese way of using a single throttle for each of your main lines. Tomix points will route the power depending on which direction the switch is pointed so if you have a train on a siding and that siding’s point is switched to the mainline the siding will not be powered. Then when you change the point to the siding will then be powered by the mainline. Basically you wire the whole mainline to the throttle in several places and the mainline is always powered and sidings are only powered when a point is switched to the siding. This is a lot simpler to wire as you just need to wire the mainlines at appropriate places. You dont have to insulate any tracks as well and it is a lot less wiring and no control panel needed. The downside it its a lot less flexible and you have to study how your points are routed to determine what track gets powered. Bit harder in some of your sidings to see whats what.

 

My first layout as a kid i had two mainline loops and big yard off one and two throttles and wired it with block wiring. I flipped the polarity of the tracks on all the inner tracks vs the outer tracks. This would let me pull a train onto each mainline and run both off one throttle and they would run in opposite directions. Of course their speeds didnt match but they would run fine off one throttle. Then i could use the other throttle to play in the yard at the same time.

 

Below is your diagram if you want to just do mainline busses using point power routing. Red outside, Green inside. You dont want any drops on your main line inside any areas with a passing siding. You also need to make sure to feed from both sides of a double crossover as they dont pass power.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Jeff

Thank you for taking the time to do that for me its what i needed and was after, i know have a decision for simple with the turnouts doing the work for me or harder more complicated wiring but giving me more options when using the layout.

I think its the insulated joiners that's throwing me i cant get my head round them, where to put them and how many and why LOL

Again thank you for your advice and for my diagram it helps greatly

 

Is there a diagram somewhere showing the old fashioned block wiring where you isolate sidings and large sections of your mainlines with insulating joiners [that you replace the metal inner joiners with]. Then you wire power to each block via a switch to turn power on or off to that block/piece of track. You can also use a DPDT switch to switch power to that section to either of two throttle or off completely

 

I have books that im looking at but with my lack of electrical knowledge its just confusing, i think it will click into place at some point i hope LOL

 

Cheers

 

Tony

Edited Sunday at 03:41 AM by Antnz

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

You are most welcome. Take your time here and think all this thru for a bit and ask more questions.

 

Block wiring is actually pretty simple to do. You just run each block wire back to the control panel and to the two center poles of a DPDT center off switch. Then you wire each throttle to the two poles on top and bottom poles of the switch. Then it just flips power from either throttle to the block or center and it’s off. You just put the insulators at the sidings and a few places on the main lines. Not horribly complicated, just a bit more work, but bit more flexibility and a bit easier to suss out your power routing. 

 

What are you going to for your point control, are you going to wire them all up or throw stuff manually? Throwing them from traditional tomix controllers can be hard as you have to figure out which point controller to throw and and what direction and that can be a bit of mental work to figure that out. There is a very simple circuit to throw points with the grow of a simple toggle switch. You could make mini point panels around the layout to do points in each major area. Same could also be done for your block power switches if you go that direction.

 

Take a look at your yards and think through how you will have to throw points in order to get power to various tracks. This will help you figure out if the power routing technique is for you. You can actually set up the track now and just power some of the mainline to see how easy/hard it is to play with.

If you have questions on the block wiring ask away, it’s all pretty straight forward wiring. Once you have the basic concept for wiring a block it’s just then repeating that. Even wiring the point with a little simple capacitor discharge circuit [consists of just a toggle switch and a capicator wired up to a power supply] is pretty easy. Mainly just running the wires and wiring up toggle swithches.

 

Cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Jeff

 

Thank you again, yes that all makes sense and i will not panic yet and think it through some more as you say. I was going to throw my points with Tomix switches which i have already have but as you say if its easier with toggles then i am happy to change to them. The soldering and wiring isn't worrying  me as much as it did this morning LOL.

That's plenty of advice for me to digest Jeff, i will read through again everything we've covered today and yes it is becoming clearer and beginning to make sense.

sorry what is power routing ??

Cheers

 

Tony

Edited Sunday at 05:42 AM by Antnz

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

yes let it digest awhile! You can also just try some tests of each way as well to see what the wiring entails for both block power and point control. Glad its all coming clearer for you.

 

power routing is the term folks use to describe how Kato and tomix point route the track power with the direction the point is thrown.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[UnfinishedKit]

The model railway electronics group (MERG)has a pretty good, extensive and free PDF book called Electronics for Model railways. Chapter 3 is on layout wiring and on page 6 there is a pretty good schematic of block wiring. 

 

https://www.merg.org.uk/content/ebook

 

[Antnz]

Cheers UnfinishedKit i will have a look and a good read hopefully it will sink in thank you for that heads up, and thank you for keeping an eye on me as well, it may save me making some big mistakes

[Antnz]

Jeff

Ive given it a lot of thought and it looks as if i have more scope and usability by going down the Block section wiring with DPDT toggle switches and wiring my turnouts with SPDT toggle switches. I don't mind the extra work or wiring as i feel this is where the fun is its just a case of working out how to do it correctly .

 

As for the DPDT toggle switches do i need center off ?? are they just called DPDT center off switches, for block wiring

 

And for the turnouts do i need momentary SPDT center off single pole double throw ??

 

I am asking know as i have to order them and it seems few people stock them or in any quantity.

As for wire i do have a good quantity of stranded double cored red/black 22 AWG, but as i wanted to color code i did get some mixed colors of stranded wire but it looks to be about 26 AWG would this be suitable ??it could be a little thicker i don't really trust the supplier

You also mentioned a capacitor discharge circuit, i think i will need advice on this

On my plan where would you suggest i put my block sections ?? of course the sidings at the stations would seem obvious as would the holding yards for coaches and other

I think that's it for know,

 Cheers

 

Tony

Edited Monday at 02:55 AM by Antnz

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

Ok, yes i think you are good to do block wiring on this layout vs the point power routing as you have a bit more complex situation going on in your yards that will make the power routing a bit of a thought process when in use all the time. While it’s a cool puzzle, it might be one of those things you tire of later and it reduces your joy in using the layout. 

 

On the wire, 22g is about as small as i would get for track power for a larger setup like this really. 18 or 20g is what i would do if i went at it. I tend to err on the side of extra in powering track. The thicker the wire the more amps [flow] you can put thru your wire and the less the resistance you will have and thus less voltage [strength of your electrical current] drop you will have over longer distances. For power transmission 22g is almost an amp max and you would only be pumping probably half an amp max as most throttles only put out a half amp to an amp max. 20g gets you 1.5a and 18g gets you 2.3a. For your little power leads from the track the 22g is fine as its a shorter run [resistance is a factor of lenght] as its easier than 18 or 20g to solder under the track. I solder 18g to track, but it is kind of maxing out the space you have in the roadbed slot. If you decide to go up in wire gauge for the block power wires look around at speaker cable. Ive usually found really nice speaker cable at 20g and 18g that was much cheaper than standard wires. My recommendation to be sure no issues would be 20g for power drops and control panel power switches and then 18g for the long runs from your power drops to your control panels.

 

I would stick with a paired wired like your red/black stuff that has clear polarization indication like that and that splits and strips well. Some paired wires in a single insulation casing do not split well and dont strip well either. That inexpensive red/black stuff ive found usually splits and strips well, but always good to test as if its hard to split and/or strip its a total pain as you will be stripping a lots of wire ends! 

 

For color coding you will have way too many blocks here to easily color code with wire colors anyway and you dont want to mix up block wires! The easiest way to color code on this is to use heat shrink pieces to color code each wire. Usually comes in like 8 colors, so you will need to do a code of 2 bands to cover all your blocks. You just cut short lenghts of it like 1cm and slip it over the wires and shrink it down with a little heat gun. You can mark your cable every few feet to keep track along the way if you want, heat shrink is dirt cheap and pretty fast to add the labels on, good tv work! Heat shrink is also what you will use to cover all your wiring solder joints, its good stuff. You can usually find deals to buy like 5 or 10m very cheap and then have enough for the rest of your life in a number of colors and sizes.

 

Yes you want the center off DPDT switches for your block power switches. You want the center off as you want to be able to turn off a block completely when not in use with a train on it you want to just sit there. They are also called ON-OFF-ON DPDT switches. They come in a range of sizes and even smaller ones are plenty of current rating for your block wiring. The switch size is more to do with how compact you want a little control panel to be, if you prefer big or small switches for your fingers and eyes, and how fiddly you want to get on wiring them. Soldering to them is easy you just tin the switch contacts and tin your wire end and place and heat to fuse. Good to put a little bit of heat shrink over it then just to avoid open metal that could get shorted by something but not necessary. On the smaller switches it gets a bit tighter, but it’s one of those things once you get some practice it’s pretty fast. You can do all the switch wires and install in a panel and just run the wire back to your track power drop and connect up there with your little pressure terminal blocks, so not much hanging out under the layout needed! Bigger switches are a bit more expensive and they are bulkier so your control panels may need to be a bit bigger. I would buy a few different sizes and play with them to see what suits you all around. 

 

At the control panels you can just have a terminal strip where you power wires connects to the wires on your power switches on the control panel. You can put this terminal block on a fold down panel under the layout front just behind the control panels and be able to work on it in the vertical position easily sitting on the floor then swing it up under the layout to get it out of the way. Just need to engineer slack wire on power and switch wires to handle this and also extra to cleanly route and dress all the wires or it can become a total rats nest! All of this wire dressing does not have to be perfect but mainly so it bundles and traces decently when you need to work on things. Little double sided Velcro strips are very handy for this as it’s firm but removable. Once you get things perfect you can get perfect if you want and use zip ties to reallly dress things down, but this is not super necessary and more of a personal preference of knowing it looks perfect even if hidden away most all the time! I like neat wiring, but im always playing the Return on Investment loop in my head with it on the time and expense I want/need to take on it, again a bit of personal preference here.

 

For all your point motors the 22g red/black stuff would be fine as those are short pulses of power at not super high amps. Don’t use momentary switches for your points, its the worst way to fire them as even just a short touch is way more of a pulse than you need to fire them well and this can cause them to bounce and will wear on your coils with over application of power. The topix and Kato point controllers are little mechanical switches that when you throw them the contact just does a very brief pass over on the other contact to fire the point motor. This gives a fairly consistent pulse, but it’s mechanical so you will find not all controllers behave the same and they may behave differently with time and also ware out. The real simple buy consistent method for firing point coils is the simple BCD capacitor discharge.circuit. It basically just flips the leads to the capacitor to the point motor. One way the charged capicator discharges in a pulse to fire the point. The other way the capacitor is charged and in that brief charge phase it actually lets thru a small discharge pulse about equal to the discharge pulse. Its a nifty use of the features of a simple capacitor and a SPDT switch [ON-ON]. We can get into this more later, but its easy to wire the capacitors and SPDT switches to a euro terminal strip to wire your point wires to them as well as your switches. You can then mount the big terminal strip with caps under the layout and not have to house it in your control panels. Once your wire leads are soldered on to the switches you can then just pop them onto the terminal strip along with the point leads.

 

I would suggest you first get all your power blocks wired first as you can then get trains running and throw points manually, Strip and tin the ends of the point wires before you install the points and that will protect the ends and you can just pop them into your little push terminals blocks under the layout to connect them to their point wires.

 

You can wire the BCD up with led indicators to show on a control panels or out on the tracks the position of the point, but this add a large amount of wiring to do. But this wire is only doing LEDs so it can be very inexpensive 30g wrapping wire, but you are talking like 3x the wiring and probably 5x or more the work to add leds to the mix. Also when the power is turned off you will loose the proper directionality of the leds and you either need to flip each switch to get it proper or add another layer of wiring complexity to create an auto reset relay circuit which i think is way diminishing returns. The nice thing about the BCD use of a SPDT switch on a control panels is the direction of the switch handle will indicate the direction the point is thrown and this will not be effected by power cycling and only gets screwed up if you manually throw a point of course.

 

I would think about having a few control panels around the layout so you can work easily in front of your main yards and not have to be looking behind you. Of course then your mainline power is distributed around the control panels but usually a lot of these will stay on cab a or b, its mainly the yard blocks that will be used a lot when moving stuff around with many powered trains are stored on sideings.

 

What are you going to use for throttles? It just occurred to me that this big donut with you in the middle makes it very hard for you to place a throttle and see all around easily. There use to be some nifty hand held DC throttles that just used a 4 conductor cable to wire to. There were a couple of wireless out there too, but it’s been ages since ive looked at that stuff. Nice to be able to walk around with cab controller as you play with things. Each of your control panels could have a little slot a walk around controller could rest in to use thee more static as you are also flipping switches.

 

You can construct a pretty nice little throttle these days with an inexpensive PWM monitor controller and a 12v power supply. Then just wire in a DPDT switch. The controller with its variable resistor knob for speed and reverser DPDT could fit in a very small hand held sized box and just wire it up with a 3 or 4m or 4 conductor 18g wire. You might take a look a round and see what is out there for walk around DC throttles now days. MRC years ago had a nice one that was pure dc speed control, then pulse power that was PWM for slow speed stuff to make engines crawl [harder to do with pure dc current] and it also had an electronic acceleration and brake on it. Ive seen folks make some nice arduino throttle like this but thats a whole other level of circuitry and programming to get into i dont think you sound into.

 

your two throttles will connect to a 16 or 18g power bus running from the throttle around the layout connecting to each control panel 

 

I can start looking at your track plan and thinking of where your blocks might be. Others here may also have some ideas that are more operations oriented. I havnt used block controls for a couple of decades as ive been doing point power routing control. It’s basically the same though. Mainly you will just have sidings and passing sidings isolated and then mainline chunks like the curves on both side. Place it gets trickier is in the center there where your yards meet the mainline, that will take some thinking to the best solution that is both simple but gives you the best operations potential. Each block just has insulated rail joiners on each end and then 1 or more feeder wires along the path of that block. Dropping feeders every meter or so on a block should be do you great and help avoid voltage drops in places. Sidings can mostly just have one drop as they are shorter and you usually are not running at any speed on them so if there is a little voltage drops no worries really [may only see it going onto another block with a better feed]. If you are using 18g for your main power wires from track trips to the control panel and 22g power drops and say 20g on the power switches then you should be fine.

 

Ok hopefully that wont pop your head too much! We can keep zeroing in on each part here one at a time.

 

I would get your track down for a test and just power the mainlines in a few places to see how it all functions and see if you need to do any layout adjustments first. Then once you have it all tested and sussed oiut well you can come back to add all the power drops on tracks and put in block track insulators where needed then.

 

If you want maybe at some point we can do a zoom and anyone else with ideas on this pop in and have a discussion. At times that is so much clearer than typing out a lot and asking questions when they arise helps.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Antnz]

JEFF

WOW thank you for that, it must have taken you a time to get all that info down for me thank you so much, i think i will print this out and read it through a few times before hitting you with more questions, i will look around for more wire i was afraid you'd say mine was to thinner gauge but i think i already knew i just didn't want to admit it. Speaker wire seems to be more readily available here for me so i will start searching the gauge i hope wont be a problem.

I will print this out and start reading

 

Thank you again already starting to get clearer in my head

 

Cheers

 

Tony

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

You are most welcome happy to help as i like it when folks go from what do i do to i figured it out! LOL, i dont mind typing and putting it all down, hope it helps you figure out what you want and need to do. All this stuff on the basic block wiring and the point wiring with bcd is pretty easy and a lot of it is sort of mass production work at the bench soldering up the track leads and your power switch leads! Rest is just stringing wires around the layout and then joining all the ends to terminal strips!

 

Speaker wire is sold all over the place. Stay away from the high end no ox stuff, it’s just a rip off on audiofiles! This is the stuff i use all the time, its great quality and easy to split the outer casing and strip wires. Bit more expensive but in the end it’s worth it being easier to work with for power cables. For your track feeders and control panel switches it may be too bulky. It doesn’t get as kinked as single insulation paired speaker wires. Single insulator paired speaker wire can work fine as long as it splits and strips well, but i find this variable a lot and the single wires in a jacket is sort of fool proof and easy to id the wires. You can get that basic black/red wire in 18g pretty cheap if money is an issue and should work ok, but i would check it first to make sure it spits and strips well as if not all your end stripping with be a total PITA!

 

Speaking of stripping [no, no floor shows please], do you have a good wire stripper? If not i would invest in one as you are going to be doing a ton of end stripping. I love the ratcheting strippers as they do an even pull on the insulation rather than using a hand one and having to yank the wire. There are two forms, ones with just  2 flat blades that comes down on either side of the insulation and ones with 2 notched blades that cuts all the way around the insulation. The flat ones work well on bigger wires but with smaller gauges they can strip some strands out as well as tear the insulation. The flat bladed ones you can just toss the wire in anywhere in the jaws and go, the notched blades you have to rest the wire in the proper gauge notch before you go, but it definitely cuts the insulation nicer and usually less rust of striping out one of the wire strands. Most of these also have a wire end stop so you can set how long you want your stripped end to be consistent. I use both kinds as if the wire tolerates the flat bladed ones i can put it in faster and also strip a pair at a time [have to do this before you split the wire though]. For delicate stuff i use the notched blades ones. A good pair of wire strippers is your real friend!

 

For now i would keep focused on getting your track sorted of all setup and tested out. We can keep discussing blocks and wiring and hopefully some others will pipe in here with some opinions and ideas as well.

 

Yes it would be best to bite the bullet and get 20g for the leads and 18g for the main power wires. You might get away with smaller like that 24g, but its a good sized layout and im thinking it would still give you some noticeable voltage drops here and there that would be a pain to try to rectify later. Best to be clean and uniform and a tad over engineered and hopefully save headaches later, its a Murphy law, if you dont build in a bit of extra it will be needed once you are done…

 

Cheers,

 

jeff

[Antnz]

Jeff

 

WOW thank you again, im really keeping you busy, ive just printed this out as well and will read it thoroughly, I do have a lovely pair of KLEIN strippers but ive just looked and they go from 32 AWG to 22 AWG just my luck, i have a box load of wires from Tomix but im not going to skimp at this stage and happy to get the wire you suggest Jeff. I have two throttle controllers as pictured

I am just about to start a search for speaker wire jeff i will have a look around for another wire stripper as well cheers i hadn't thought about that but yes i will need another to fit this wiring.

I also have a multi-meter arriving soon, i dug the one out i purchased just a few weeks ago and sure enough its fully rusted corroded inside ufff

Yes i will concentrate on getting the track down and tested, but i wanted to cover this know so if i have to buy anything or order i have it on hand when i need it but yes its falling into place and starting to make sense Jeff.

I will get the DPDT and SPDT switches ordered as well, WOW we have covered a lot cheers Jeff

 

Tony

 

 

[cteno4]

Those throttles will work and later if you want to roam around you can always figure something more mobile.

 

Yikes thats a pile of tomix wires. Hopefully you can maybe sell them off in bulk to a few folks in Australia! While you might get away with those tomix wires and extensions, on this size layout i think there could be some voltage drops.

 

good little multimeters are great thing to have around to test for voltage and continuity. They are dirt cheap these days fortunately.

 

digest a while.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[MrLinderman]

Tony, I'll buy a handful at the cost you paid if you want. would be after a bunch for my "testing" layout.

[Antnz]

Jeff & MrLinderman

 

The Tomix wires were worrying me as to the size and length of my layout as well im glad ive talked it through with you, and yes i will rest and digest everything we've covered don't worry my head is spinning i think i will sit back and just take it in, i will get the wire ordered and the SPDT and the DPDT 

 

I think i will hang on to the wires just know MrLinderman as i have heaps of led lighting i want to do for buildings and street lighting i think they may be handy for that and easy connections but hey thank you for the generous offer

 

I am surprised no one has had a go at me for using or sticking with DC and not going with DCC, Ive seen other forums where DC gets attacked viciously

 

Cheers guys

 

Tony

[cteno4]

Tony,

 

not so much viciously as just adamantly! But yes DCC folks love thier DCC and hate DC usually and it sometimes comes across badly.

 

Ive played with DCC and have the skills and knowledge to use it pretty easily, but im also a big ROI calculator and the time and trouble to add decoder to my hundreds of trains is just way too much time let alone cost. I dont really wnat to run two trains on the same track much at all, you need a decent sized layout to do that. Even on our old club with a bigger layout it was taxing to run two trains on the longer loops [we use to laugh as as soon as someone doing dcc would chat to someone for 30 seconds they would end up crashing something!] There are many fun things you can do with DCC but i just dont need/want most of them and simple DC works great for me. 

 

Many folks just dont want to be a tech head with DCC and their trains, they want it simple. You have sounded all along you wanted to keep things simple. You can always do dcc later and your block wiring should pretty much convert to dcc very easily.

 

To each his own.

 

Cheers,

 

jeff

[cteno4]

BTW for your led lighting you can just run a 5v buss around the layout in 18g wire and have terminal strip break outs at points you have lighting needs. Then just use very inexpensive [$5 for 1000ft so half cent per foot!] and small 30g wrapping wire to wire from the leds [and limiting resistor] in your building down to the buss terminal strip. The wrapping wire is small and flexible to use in structures and its super strong for fine wire as the stranded core is tinned so its very tough and pvc insulation. In structures you dont want big bulk wires for space, bending and easily threading out thru the base for power. The tiny 30g wrapping wire can power a half dozen leds for a meter or so and it is the cheapest wire you can buy!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[MrLinderman]

38 minutes ago, Antnz said:

Jeff & MrLinderman

 

The Tomix wires were worrying me as to the size and length of my layout as well im glad ive talked it through with you, and yes i will rest and digest everything we've covered don't worry my head is spinning i think i will sit back and just take it in, i will get the wire ordered and the SPDT and the DPDT 

 

I think i will hang on to the wires just know MrLinderman as i have heaps of led lighting i want to do for buildings and street lighting i think they may be handy for that and easy connections but hey thank you for the generous offer

 

I am surprised no one has had a go at me for using or sticking with DC and not going with DCC, Ive seen other forums where DC gets attacked viciously

 

Cheers guys

 

Tony

 

All good matey, re-using the connectors would be the most efficient use of them for sure, plenty of uses.

 

As for DCC vs DC... Everyone has their own way of doing the hobby, which is one reason I am really enjoying it so far, allows for your own personal flavor of modelling, for me its all about the tech and automation, but no way would i bag anyone who wants it to be about the driver experience.

Edited yesterday at 01:34 AM by MrLinderman

[UnfinishedKit]

For cheap PWM controller, there’s this place in the UK

 

https://handem.uk/collections/controller-connection?srsltid=AfmBOoqTvpwQqRELOmOVhxLcik6TAVyxQRsuYiWQRsn4lL1pvagX0gfp

 

but they are just selling boards from alibaba which will reach you cheaper and quicker from China. 
 

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPlJ1cb

[Antnz]

WOW thank you UnfinishedKit Ive been given a heap of information today, well every time i come here actually, but they look just the ticket, perhaps they could be plugged in at different sites on the layout or just carried about but worth a look and so cheap as well. Yes the cost of this crazy idea is adding up and any savings greatly excepted, but the fun im having its worth it, and im not wanting to skimp know ive to much invested in it.

 

Cheers

 

TONY

[cteno4]

Yeah very simple pwm board, power supply and box. 2a pwm board is like $4 or less! A nice big aluminum controller knob probably the most expensive thing. Pwm board can go in a mobile box that has a 4 conductor cable to wire it into the power supply and layout. 4 conductor cable is probably the most expensive. Ive also just found a few wireless pwm boards that are pretty inexpensive that might be an interesting thing for us to use at train shows instead of our big clunky dual powerpack.

 

Anyhow something to think about later.

 

@MrLinderman I completely agree that its something for each to find their joy and direction in the hobby.

 

cheers

 

jeff