You may be surprised to see this post as a wiring update, as I had planned to finish the track up to the New Brighton yard. Well, I hit a little speed bump and those plans changed. More on the “speed bump” in later as it deserves it’s own post.

Back to wiring. I pulled the buss wires for all most of the lower level, from New Brighton yard up to the town of Brandon. Through Brandon to the helix I am not sure yet of where the signal sections are and didn’t want to guess until the track is down. Below are a couple of pictures of the bus wires pulled and then hooked up to the terminal blocks. A couple of notes before the photos. First is a picture of the wires pulled and bundled, you should have seen the mess of wires before I got them all zipped tied together. Second, I originally figured I would have 8 signal blocks at most on the lower level, actually I now believe it to be 7, so I installed a terminal block with 8 posts. I forgot that there is a north and south track (14 posts), sidings ( another post) and the reverse loop (3 more posts). So I had to add in the second barrier strip along side the original. The color coding is as follows: black – common, red – north bound, white – south bound and green – sidings.

After the buss wires were in I started installing the feeder wires. I started by following the tracks around and making a mark by each place one was to be installed. I also put a piece of tape on edge of the upper deck (more on this in a minute) and when I was sure that I had not missed any sections, installed the feeder wires. I drilled the holes and then pulled the wires down through the layout and out to the front edge using a piece of tape to secure them. The tape was a double check to make sure I didn’t miss any of the marks I had made and to hold the wires in place until I soldered them to the buss wires.

Also while I was laying track I had marked the signal block boundaries, which helped when pulling buss wires.

On my last layout I had a rather complicated four digit code for the signal blocks, this time I kept it very simple. I did manage to  get one section of track wired to the buss, but had to call it a night.

Getting close, until then – Happy Railroading…

I started the wiring for the DCC system. As I said in my last post I am temporarily unable to start the base for the helix because of a minor remodeling project.

I started by wiring the 44 pin connectors for the Digitrax (www.digitrax.com ) PM42 Quad Power Manager.  I wired up four of them, why might you ask. Well, I am going to have 8 power subdistricts, so I will have 2 PM42’s. But when I built the tower for the DCC equipment I put in spaces for four slots. I had 1 good connector and picked up a pack of 3 additional connectors ( that’s the way they are sold, why, you would have to ask Digitrax ). Since I had 4 on hand I decided to wire up all 4, my reasoning being either because of future expansion ( I can’t imagine gaining enough space to need more power subdistricts ) or because if one the connectors failed, I could just move the circuit board over to a new connector.

I started by building a jig to hold the connectors in a stable cradle while I wired them up and soldered them. I used 14 gauge wire except for the power for the boards. In order to get the 14 gauge wire to fit in the oval slots on the connector I had pound the round wire into a shape that would pass through the slot. It took a few attempts to get them right, but once I figured out how much it took to get them to fit it was pretty easy.

Below are pictures of the finished connectors wired up, on the long bare wires I applied a brush on insulator.

Next was to install them into the DCC tower. Because of the way I built the cabinets, I had about 8 inches to work in. For reference a standard screw driver is about 9 inches long, so I had to get my two hands and a stubby screw driver into this space and attach the connectors while wrestling with stiff 14 gauge wire . Oh yeah, a lot of fun. It took a bit, but I got it done.

I then ran the wires for the first PM42 and hooked them up to the barrier strips. Below are pictures of the electronics cabinet with the wiring in place.

As you can see in the above photos I also ran the first two sets of buss wires and have them hooked up to the top two barrier strips. The first (top ) strip is for the staging yard, the next one down is for the New Brighton yard. The lower two are for signaled districts and that is why there are larger strips as each separate signaled section needs it’s own terminal.

It’s while I was running the first two sets of buss wires that I truly appreciated taking the time to drill all the holes for the wire runs. Running the wires went very quickly and neatly. Below is a picture of the buss wires run under what will be the New Brighton yard. The two wires ( red and black ) run in the separate holes are for that yard. The separation should make it easy to hook up the feeder wires. The pair running above them are for the staging yard and will separate into separate runs once they are under the staging yard.

Okay… so I had the command station and booster hooked up, the PM42’s wired in and buss wires run, so I figured why not give it a try. So I run a pair of jumper wires from the staging yard buss to one of the yard tracks ( I had not run the feeder wires in yet ) and as I was grabbing a locomotive to try I realized I DID NOT HAVE A THROTTLE! Let me explain: when I was finishing the basement for the layout, I had to move all the boxes with the railroad stuff into our storage locker. Most of it is still there except for stuff that I had room for in the cabinets. Unfortunately the throttles fall into the former group. So I had everything in place and no way to try it. With an upcoming business trip I won’t be able to retrieve the throttle to try it out for about a week. I guess that’s life.

Until that happens, Happy Railroading…

This post goes hand in hand with the last post as lighting is being installed as the bench work is being built. The reason I didn’t talk about it then was because it would have been to much information for one post.

On the last layout I had experimented with several different types of lights for the lower deck. To answer the question, yes I played around with a variety of Christmas lights that everyone said would not work. I just figured they hadn’t done it right and I would be able to make it work. Yes, I know I’m an idiot.

So I figured on the new layout I was going to have to suck it up and spend the money on fluorescent strip lights. I planned on using T5 lights at about $10 a foot. This was going to get expensive as I figured to get around the layout was about 85 feet times 2, as I would need to light both decks. Then I “discovered” commercial string lights on Partylights.com, the type restaurants use over there patios. They are 50 foot strings that take standard light bulbs up to 25 watts. Not enough light if you’re using incandescent bulbs, but more then enough if using CFLs. I have since learned that the model railroad world knew about these, but no one told me about them.

But what to do with all the Christmas lights I had bought. Well the strings of C7 are strung over my deck for lighting, like the restaurants. And the ropes lights? I’m using those to light the aisles.

Once I installed the sub roadbed they give off enough light to light the aisles rather nicely. I will get a picture posted at a later date. I will be running a blue rope lights through the upper deck joists for night lighting.

As I had mentioned when assembling the upper deck I had to run the light string as I was assembling the bench work. One thing I failed to mention was that I originally spaced the studs on a 16″ center, but after buying the string lights I moved these to a 12″ on center spacing as the sockets are set every 24 inches. Fortunately this happened early enough in the process that it was easy to do.

I was pretty sure since CFL’s diffuse light rather well that even though they were set in every other bay there wouldn’t be very much light pooling. The moment of truth came when I had finished the bench work and installed all the bulbs. The result was perfect as the lighting is very even you as can see below.

After I finish all the bench work I be installing a valance around the layout and will be installing both the CFL’s and a string of blue rope lights, again for night lighting.