Model Railway Forum

My layout has been dismantled for about 18 months due building work. I will shortly be putting it back together in the newly decorated and de-junked cellar. As I now have more space the layout will probably be about 2 metres longer. For this and other reasons I am planning to use the Roco Z21 app on an old Android smart phone. When the Roco router arrived earlier in the week it provoked yet another conversation with senior management about keeping things tidy and not filling the room with more 'technological junk'! "You are not planning on fixing that thing to the wall are you?"

So in the interests of world peace I plan to mount my z21 & PSU, the router & PSU, and 12V DC PSU (for lights etc), and a four way mains adapter UNDER the baseboard.

My question is will any of this interfere with the DCC signals. It is an L shaped end to end layout and all this technological junk will be at one end, under three sidings and about 500mm away from two Cobalt IP point motors.

Unless you've got bare wiring touching each other, I don't beleive these devices will emit anything strong enough on the Electro-Magnetic spectrum that would interfere with anything else on your layout.

You may find that the baseboard blocks some of the WiFi signal from your router (if you use WiFi), so you may find you get better signal strength from devices if the router or the antennae are above the baseboard.

Short answer, no!

Richard

If you are not permitted to mount a router on the wall, can you not use a table or work bench for it to sit on? Keeping the router out from under the baseboard can only improve the wi-fi signal strength.

But to answer the question, No it shouldn't make any interference. But having 240 volts anywhere on a layout always possess potential risks - Fire, accidently cutting the mains power cable, electrocution etc.

Brian wrote: ↑Tue Oct 21, 2025 2:01 pm ...having 240 volts anywhere on a layout always possess potential risks - Fire, accidently cutting the mains power cable, electrocution etc.

That is a very good point! I may well need to drill some holes for yard lights or something in the future.

I think I will move on to plan B and mount everything on a board/box at the end of the layout. The router has to be plugged into the z21 via a network cable and I wanted to keep everything together so there is only one mains cable going from the layout.