Model Railway Forum

Walkingthedog wrote: ↑Sun Apr 04, 2021 4:16 pm Well done Steve. 14 March until 04 April to get trains running. Perfect.

Sorry for my tardiness, must try harder.

Quite a few on here would have faffed about for a year or so on a PC planning what went where

I’ve been up to my elbows in wire strippers and soldering irons this week. All but three of the points on this layout are on one board so with this one almost done the rest should be fairly straightforward.

And believe it or not I have had a plan (imperfect though it is) for the wiring. The main DCC bus runs along the back of the board using blue/brown wire stripped from some twin and earth with all track feeds, also blue and brown.

Alongside the DCC bus is the common return for all the point motors with all common wires from the motors in white. Yellow is used for the point switching wires which run to a tag strip (labelled) at the front of the board. The point switches will eventually connect to that strip. With hindsight I should perhaps have put the common point return at the front so all point wires ran the same way.

The motors are all Seeps and at the moment the integral switch is used for frog polarity switching (not ideal) but in time the points will be fitted with autofrogs for that purpose and the integral switches will be used for the less critical role of controlling LEDs on the control panel.

Also at the front is a 12v DC bus pair - the intention is for this to supply a number of 1amp distribution boards currently somewhere on a boat.in the South China Sea.

2021-04-09_10-49-22 by Steve Mumford, on Flickr

Connections across the board joints will be by way of D-sub connectors, doubling up the pins where higher current demands it. Lots of soldering required to complete that little job.

Finally, I can recommend JPR Electronics, who supplied the wire and connectors. Reasonable prices and quick delivery.

https://www.jprelec.co.uk/

That is just so incredibly neat and organised. Hats off to you sir.

I love it when a plan comes together

What I don’t understand is why when I plan a wiring project which, dare I say it, resembles in my head at least, what you have produced Steve, looks by the time I’ve finished as though a hand-grenade had gone off in close proximity. Very neat and entirely depressing. R-

Feeling rather smug as only one point motor didn’t work when tested. Had to swap two wires .
Surprised no one spotted it on point no. 10.

Your progress is truely amazing.

Am following your thread with interest Steve, it’s good to see how an experienced modeler goes about producing a new layout. Hopefully you will stay ahead of me and I can follow your lead .

Dave.

Thanks for the comments chaps (and I still blame Barry for setting me on this project )

Journeyman wrote: ↑Fri Apr 09, 2021 10:01 pm
Hopefully you will stay ahead of me and I can follow your lead .

Dave, that’s a very dangerous path. But also the advantage of a forum like this - the sharing of ideas and methods can hopefully inspire others to try things out. There is so much to learn from others efforts both here and in the magazines so the only challenge is having the courage to try something out.
I post my mistakes as well as the successes - we can learn so much from the things that don’t go quite right.

I think I am going to be deep into soldering for a little while as I have to mock up the mimic board and create pluggable cables to connect the boards electrically.