I'm using AtlasO track right now due to its ease in putting together, despite the requirement to have to rewire every switch of theirs due to a handy, but flawed design. See a previous post on some of that work.
Here is overall layout design:
I used Atlas' RRTrack to do the design and wrote on it with my text editor. I think I used the 3R library, edited to only have the 2R pieces that are currently made. There are a few sections where some curves won't match up, but those will be done by cutting flex track. With much of the track laid in the right 4x8 section, I wanted to go ahead and get some of it wired, so I could run my engines back and forth. Below will show a photo essay of the work it took to get those wired and what my control area currently looks like...
The control point is at about 2 feet from where the 2 4x8s connect to make the L. The picture shows all of the various components I have to run my 2R DCC. I decided to go with Digitrax after learning more about it and getting a good deal on a system from Jerry Davis and George Lasley. It also came with a 20A power supply that Digitrax makes. So here is how it all works...
The 20A supply supplies power to the 8A DCS200 Booster. This booster then supplies the DCC signal to everything connected to its Loconet port and from the track output. That track output goes to two places. One is to the PTB-100 (more on that next). The other is to the DCC Specialities RRampmeter, which is specially made to read the square wave AC DCC signal and gives an accurate measurement of the current and voltage being used by my layout (I have no blocks). From there, the power is fed to the PSX-1, which provides my extremely quick short circuit protection. That device is also made by DCC Specialties and is customizable for amperage settings. The PSX feeds to both of the 10AWG barrier (terminal) strips from Home Depot. I had to get the jumpers from Digikey and they cost more than the strips...sad I know. The jumpers for the 18AWG strips also cost more than those strips, but are readily available from Radio Shack. I had gotten a deal on 10AWG wire from an OGR Forumite (along with the 18AWG wiring I am using for all the feeders and other needs), thus my usage of 10AWG wire. I selected several feed points to run the wire to and have wired a bunch of feeders. More on that after the PTB-100 info.
Looking back again at the picture, you can see a UR92, which provides the wireless signal from the DT402D. It is connected to the booster with an RJ12 cable. It has its own power supply. The lights on both the UR92 and the DT402D can be used to ensure that my signals are reaching the booster and vice versa. A locobuffer2 is also shown wire-strapped to the leg. That is used to connect my macbookpro with JMRI DecoderPro to my booster via the loconet terminal on the UR92. This is used to program all of the decoders with a custom easy-to-use interface. It removes the need to memorize and understand hundreds of CV settings across the different manufacturers. It is a must have for DCC (I personally think everything in my control setup is a must have (ie - PSX, RRampmeter). Last, I screwed in a screw to hold the voltmeter I regularly use on projects...now I will always know where it is.
So here's the PTB-100 setup. The PTB-100 is made by soundtraxx and is necessary to program sound decoders that cannot be normally programmed with just the programming output of the booster. PTB stands for programming track booster. The PTB is wired from the booster, 20A supply, and is fed to a terminal block, which I will then eventually wire to a piece of isolated track on my layout that will be used to program engines. Currently, I added a DPST switch that cuts the power on/off to the PTB100. I was going to use the other prongs to control the power direction to the programming track...will design that later.
Another part of my control board is to use the Tam Valley Hex Frog Juicers (in the bottom right of the above photo). I have about 11 switches on my layout and I have ran separate feeders to all of the frogs. The first 6 I laid have been connected to one of these boards. This board is used to instantly change the polarity of a switch, so that I can have all of my frogs powered and is especially needed for all of those little switcher engines to give an extra ability to safeguard against power failure. It is wired from my track bus. They are available from here: http://www.tamvalleydepot.com/
So I added a cheap light from Home Depot to under the layout...where I also have an extra workbench setup. You can see the 10AWG wire coming from the right and swinging around to the ends of the track on my layout. It goes directly through the wood beam at the left as I drilled a 1" hole in there, which is an easy way to get wiring held up along the layout. Thinking back...I should have ran it across the middle of those tracks instead, but its okay, since my layout is so small. You can see from white wire, red and green 18AWG wires that are my feeders to the track itself. I ran the bus wire (10AWG) first and then soldered to the bottom of the track, the feeders that I knew would be long enough to reach the terminal/barrier strips. I wire. I then took the bus wire and used my wire strippers and an x-acto to remove sections of the bus and wrapped a feeder from the bus to the terminal in the correct polarity. I then soldered that feeder to the bus wire. I could have used suitcase connectors I guess, but soldering would have a 100% success rate. Terminal strips made it easy to run multiple tracks to the same bus location and will make it easier to reuse wire if/when I decide to retire this layout.
I double checked all of my work by taking my multimeter and ohming out the 2 rails to ensure there were no shorts. I noticed I was not consistent in color coding the wiring from the track feeders and had to fix only one of the connections at the terminal.
Also, the red hangers were found at I think Lowes and were IMHO one of the better options for running wire as the top opens up and you can keep adding more wires into the channels when need be. A very flexible option that is not ruined everytime one wants to make a change or replace a failed wire. They take 2 drywall screws to anchor in place. A 1" one at the top and a 2" one that goes in at an angle from the bottom.
This last photo shows the end of one of my bus runs. It is wired to a terminal strip that has a snubber wired in parallel to the last feeder connection. The snubber is used to cut down on issues with over-voltage that one can see, which has the potential to fry decoders. Here's a website on more info on this topic (and many others) http://www.wiringfordcc.com/dcc_waveforms.htm It was basically a 150ohm 2W resistor soldered to a .1uF capacitor. The leads of those were then put in the terminal strip and connect the 2 bus wires.
The last item of interest here is that you'll also notice the bus wire is twisted a lot. Several times per foot. This is to reduce the inductance caused by the pair and hopefully reduce interference with other wiring on the layout. This is also discussed on the previous website, among other sites that deal with DCC. I'll end this with a photo of one of my snubbers:
No comments:
Post a Comment