Flimsey5 | modelrailroad

Tips for Building Your Layout Pt. 5: Electrical

The Electrical Side of Your Layout

Discussion of Power Systems and basic wiring

Let me begin this chapter by paraphrasing Richard Nixon: “Let me make one thing perfectly clear, I am not ‘electrical!’” Ask DuWayne Deering or Daryl Oestreich about my “talents” with electricity and they will laugh themselves silly. Seriously, I have very definite problems with anything beyond the basics of electricity----and I have troubles with that as well. I am the kind of Boob that can hook something up following the instructions faithfully……..and get Dreck.

That said, on we go to Power Systems

Before one delves into the basic track wiring, let us take a look at what there is to power your layout. I have no idea what your interests are. You can power your layout using:

-Ye Olde reliable Power Pack

-Walk-around Throttles, which also includes:

a. Wireless control,

b. Tethered throttles

-Direct Command Control (DCC)

-Computer Interfacing

With the first two, there is more to this than just laying the track. If you plan on operating more than one train at a time, there are “blocks” to be hooked up and insulated rail joiners to install. There are jumper wires to install to power spurs. It can get extremely complicated.

With a walk-around power system using tethered hand-held throttles, there is the additional headache of locating and installing plug-in terminals where you need them, and the throttle cable to connect it all.

With the third (DCC), it starts out complicated and only gets worse (I’m only partially kidding). DCC doesn’t require blocks or insulated rail joiners. It does simplify that aspect of the layout, and as DCC continues to evolve, it is becoming easier to understand and use.

Computer Interfacing involved several very complicated facets that can’t be described here; it would take several pages to try to run all the information down. Boiled down to basic “simplicity” (yeah, right), you can get your computer to run your entire layout, human-hands free, and I’m not making this up. Model Railroader magazine ran a series of articles about 20 years ago (already!) on this facet of the hobby. I read most of it and there are a few portions that you could use for your own layout, such as generating actual Switch Lists for your trains, block signal and control of crossing signals, or using it for special effects like structure and outdoor lighting controls, but beyond that? I’ll leave that up to you.

Just what your goals are in building your model pike will dictate what kind of power system you should/will install. If you’re thinking that at this point, Keith is going to endorse one type of power system over another, well, you’re going to be very disappointed. Oh, I admit that I do like DCC; I like a walk-around power system, preferably without the hanging throttle cord----this is because of my experience with it from our Club layout. This is why I endorsed the wire-less DCC system we adopted on the Club Layout---no tethered cables to get thy feets tangled in and ripping those cords out and creating all sorts of damage. I lean to walk-around power systems because I like my model railroad to be doing something rather than running in an endless circle. But, keep in mind that is my own preference, not yours. I’m willing to bet here that 98% of you reading this have settled on a centrally-located power pack already. Everyone model railroads in their own way, which is how it should be; technically, there really is no set “right way” in this Hobby. There are “easier” and “better” ways to do something and that is what I’m trying to pass along here.

Ye Olde Power Packs

Go ahead and laugh; I started Model Railroading on a Marnostat power pack, something my Late Father acquired at some point in the mid-1950’s before I was BORN (I came along in 1963)! That old Marnostat got a lot of use and eventually rolled over and died; I took it apart and never got it back together again. Thinking back, that old Marnostat was State-of-the-Art at one time; my, how things have changed in nearly 60 years. People openly laugh at the now-crude-looking (and crudely operating) Marnostat Power Packs these days.

I’ve forgotten what replaced the old Marnostat, but it was some years later that Dad acquired a brand-new MRC “Tech II 1500” power pack, which is still one of their premier power packs. These were adequate and reasonably priced. They are durable. The “Tech” line was supposed to, more-or-less; replace MRC’s “Throttlepack” line (these are still available). The Hub City Central still has one of the three MRC Throttlepacks we started out with 28 years ago! The remaining Throttlepack is many-times repaired and much rebuilt, but still giving service.

The best power packs ever manufactured in the past 30 years were those marketed by Troller. Troller Autopulse packs were top-of-the-line in their time, and still are. It’s an unfair shame that Troller wound up tangled in the legal morass that was left behind Hobbies for Men after they went out of business and helped drive Troller into the ground as well.

I can’t really recommend any specific power pack to you. The only advice I can give is to buy carefully, choose carefully and hope you find what you are looking for.

Walk-around throttles

The Hub City Central purchased Kurtz Kraft walk-around throttles some years ago, and we got nearly 16 years of life out of them. The system was moderately priced and it did the job for 16 years. However, I wish someone had told us that Kurtz Kraft throttles WEAR OUT in TEN years---we’d have never purchased them. Because of the Kurtz Kraft system, I became an early convert to wire-less throttle control. There is a firm out there that markets a DC walk-around system that is completely wire-less. I wish we had known about it before we purchased the Kurtz Kraft system! The Kurtz Kraft system was easily enough repaired---you could buy any part you needed at Radio Shack----so long as Radio Shack stocked the parts, that is. Problem was, when the original components began wearing out due to age, all you did was repair, repair, and repair. In fact, a unit could be in perfect operating condition at one show, but completely unusable at the next set up, be it at a show, back at the clubhouse or vice-versa. You never knew when or where they would drop dead, but it wasn’t hard to glean the “why” when one started going over each and every component.

It never failed to make me a happier fellow when one of these Kurtz Kraft throttles would die in the middle of a show we had the Hub City Central displayed at (this happened at Green Bay one year).

I also can’t help but to note here that after driving myself buggy for how many years trying to find coiled cords to replace the old straight power cords on the hand-held Kurtz Kraft System that, by the time I was successful in finding said coiled cords and installing them, the Kurtz Kraft system on the layout was finished. There’s some sort of irony there, too.

Walk-around throttles are nice, especially in a layout situation where you need to be following your train. Walk-around throttles have been around for over 30 years in one form or another. Back in the mid-1970’s, the Late Don Fehmann wrote extensively in the pages of Railroad Model Craftsman on walk-around throttles and designed and built several examples of his own. A Walk-around throttle doesn’t make anything any simpler---in fact, you still need to wire-up your layout in the “traditional” manner even if you were using regular power packs. In fact, they add additional wiring in the form of a throttle cable and additional plug-ins along the edge of your layout. But, they give you flexibility a centrally-located power pack never will.

DCC

Newsflash: The DCC on the Hub City Central is FULLY FUNCTIONAL and operational!!!!! Regardless of the problems that have gone into understanding it, it does work! I’m still a proponent of DCC. Several aspects became far simpler, but on the downside, there is an extensive learning curve and re-equipping all your locomotives with DC decoders becomes an expen$ive proposition. However, it eliminates some wiring, adds a number of facets to your hobby and to your layout, and opens up a whole new vista to model railroading. There are four versions of DCC on the market: Bachmann, Model Rectifier, Digitrax, and NCE. They all do basically the same thing, but MRC’s version could be considered to be the “crudest” of the three, Bachmann comes in about in this space between MRC and Digitrax, while Digitrax’s version would be the Hippo, and NCE is considered to be the “Cadillac” among DCC systems amongst some modelers. Many modelers now endorse the NCE version. Digitrax offers the option to expand easily, which is why the HCC opted for it. Bachmann, MRC and NCE require you to purchase additional systems to expand; Digitrax is expandable as it is.

When it comes to DCC, if you so choose to go this route, keep in mind, like choosing a power pack, of what it is you plan on doing and what you want your layout to do. I like DCC because of the wire-less throttles. I wouldn’t recommend it to someone that simply wants to let their trains run in a circle. The cost simply doesn’t justify something like this for a basic oval layout. You may want “the best”, but there is a limit. On my own never-to-be-built layout, I haven’t sufficiently addressed this subject, especially after DuWayne Deering found those wire-less hand-held, DC-powered walk-around throttles on the Internet. For a model railroad like what I wanted to build, I questioned the need for DCC and relative simplicity versus what appeared to be a tangle of wiring. One facet offsets another.

When I figure out what I want, I’ll let you know.

Mention of how the “Big Boys” did it

I would be remiss if I did not make mention here of how some popular home layouts featured in Model Railroader are powered. First was John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid. The G&D was built before walk-around control was available in any form, and John operated it with relatively few power packs----those that he had on the layout were, for the most part, cobbled together by John Allen himself from various parts acquired from other sources. John was an articulate planner; for operating the trains over the main line, his power “stations” (which is really what they were) were centrally located on the peninsula at Gorre, on the original 4x7 layout. There were power stations at Great Divide, Port and Andrews for the flexibility of the operator working the yards there. I’m betting that had John Allen lived past January 1973, the G&D would have found itself being operated with a walk-around control designed and built by John himself, based directly off the walk-around controls designed and built by the Late Don Fehmann.

Frank Ellison’s Delta Lines was powered by Lionel “Z’ packs in a centrally located area. John Armstrong’s Canandaigua Southern eventually found its way to being powered by walk-around controls. Bruce Chubb’s Sunset Valley started out powered an a similar manner as John Allen’s Gorre & Daphetid, but Chubb believed in innovation and the SV eventually found itself powered by walk-around control. I’m not sure if Chubb is still alive or if the SV is still existent. If so, I’ll bet the SV is now DCC.

Allen McClelland’s Virginia & Ohio started life with “strategically” located power packs. McClelland, like Bruce Chubb, was not adverse to innovation and he converted the V&O to walk-around control very early. In its present state, if the V&O still exists, is probably powered by DCC now. (ITEM: Allen McClelland’s famous V&O Layout is no more. McClelland retired and he and his wife moved to a retirement home of much smaller proportions and the infamous Virginian & Ohio layout is no longer existent.)

David Barrow’s Cat Mountain & Santa Fe was walk-around control from day one, but Barrow has long since changed over to DCC.

I could fill up much more on how the “giants” in Model Railroading power their layouts, but these few examples should give you an idea of what you can do.

I’ll throw this in here about Computer Interface examples: “Trainz”, a display layout located I forget where (it was featured in Model Railroader about 10 years ago) was what I call an, “Institutional Display Layout”, is fully computer interfaced. The layout is one of the largest in the world, and it was a requirement to have it operate 20 hours a day. In this case, you’d never find enough people to continually operate something this large all day, every day except holidays, so a computer interface makes sense here. There are other operating layouts like Trainz that are interfaced because of the operational scope involved. In this case, having a computer do all the “work” is “nifty” and makes sense. Beyond some of the things I listed back above on this, I can’t see this for a home layout.

On to the Layout wiring

Now, we return to wiring the layout. Remember those feeder wires we installed laying track? Here is where they will be put to good use. Now, you are going to find out why I got sick of sitting on my ass on a cold concrete floor.

Any sized layout, from the 4x8 to something more extravagant, needs the addition of a “Buss” wire following the main line---even if it is to be powered by DC or DCC!! The Buss wire provides an extra electrical path and helps put the power where you need it. Between sections, it acts as the feeder for a jumper. It partially eliminates those pesky, unexplained dead spots and shorts up above (but, if you soldered your rail joints, you shouldn’t be having these problems---!). Connecting your feeder wire to the Buss wire is accomplished by using “Terminal” or “Barrier” strips under the layout. From this Buss wire you’ll attach the wiring to your Yard Tracks, House Tracks, and Industry Spurs. It even behooves you to have that Buss wire with a DCC system. You can’t escape it!

No bare wires!

Something else I learned from the Hub City Central: Wires being connected to a barrier strip need to have loop eye connectors put on. Twisting wires together and screwing the production down into the barrier strip just doesn’t work. Oh, it will work, for a time; but with bare wires you run the risk of shorts and non-conductivity due to corrosion—copper wires will corrode and turn green with disastrous results! With the Club layout, things are exposed to extreme forces you won’t have on a home layout, like jumper plug wiring getting pulled off, humidity extremes, heat and cold temperature extremes, but you still should not have bare wires anywhere under your layout. Everything should be insulated from something else. That way, you avoid embarrassing problems later on. I’m cause to remember an intermittent short that plagued us at a train show once. I traced it down to what had been John Ruple’s corner module. It was one of the oddest things I have ever seen; one loose strand of wire, less in circumference than a strand of human hair, was gleefully “flitting” back and forth, touching the barrier post screw on one track---not the track it was supposed to be connected to. I have no idea if this was due to magnetism in the electricity or if there was a slight breeze under the layout. It was somewhat entertaining to watch, but what frustrated the life out of me was this was one place I had missed as I went about under the layout adding loop eye connectors! Loop eye connectors have a place, even on a home layout.

Now, a word of fair warning

Once you get this far in your track wiring, and many things will happen: You’ll have a weird outlook on the world from sitting on your ass on a cold concrete floor looking up and working over your head, and, you’ll be fairly certain God hates you and has a contorted sense of humor. You may even begin having arguments with yourself (in fact, I’d bet on this). You’ll wonder if model railroading is really “fun”. You’ll wonder if you’ll ever get off your ass from that cold concrete floor and begin running trains (after all, wasn’t that the reason you built this layout in the first place!??), and you’ll begin to forget what the top of your layout looks like. I’m not kidding when I tell you that when you painfully stand up from a long session of working under your layout doing wiring, that you’ll suddenly notice something different on the top of the layout, something that you’ll be fairly certain you don’t remember doing.

But, you did.

You’ll also begin to wonder if you’ll ever complete connecting all those feeder wires up under the layout because, at a point in this project, it will seem just as though the more work you do under there soldering wires and screwing them to a terminal strip, there seems to be ever more to do.

Well Bunkie, let me assure you that this is only the beginning. As you decide to add other features, such as operating crossing signals, block signals, and/or switch machines, you’re going to see a lot of that underside of the layout---even if you choose to go DCC. One reason I chose to model the Greenwood Line was: No “extras”. No crossing signals. No Block Signals. Only a few street lights in Marshfield, Loyal and Greenwood near the tracks, here and there a yard light on a farm, home, business or industry. Neither Greenwood nor Loyal had Traffic Signals and the tracks were far enough away from the one intersection they did pass near (the intersection of Highway 98 and County ‘K ‘) that it wouldn’t have mattered if that intersection had had traffic lights. It was relative simplicity in the simplest form (I can bet I’d have still had problems with it).

Once you get beyond the basic wiring, complications set in. One of the first is:

Those Blocks and those “gaps” you installed, along with power lead wires of two colors

I can’t help but to sarcastically point out that if you had chosen to use a Direct Command Control system, this step is basically unnecessary. However, even I prefer to turn the power off on certain tracks, even with a DCC system. When you install blocks (this is the reason you used Insulated Rail Joiners---also referred to as “Gaps”), your track power wiring to that track (or “tracks” as the case may be) must be routed first through an on/off switch from the Buss wire, and then connected to the track feeder wires to that spur. Now, this isn’t bad if it is only one or two tracks, but when you get to the point of wiring up a yard, this is where the reference to an explosion in a spaghetti factory comes in. If you work as one rail at a time and go in a clockwise manner, and take care to keep your wiring to such trackage coherent and labeled, it won’t be so bad and having to track down problems later on won’t be so hard to do.

I have never found an on-off switch for blocks that I like; many modelers have used Atlas’ old Slide Switches for this. They work, but are made so cheaply that with any sort of use, they wear out fairly quickly. Then, there is the “problem” of, “Right “on’ and Left “off”, or vice versa? Oh, yes; I’ve found some modelers couldn’t get that slight point right, and since they didn’t bother to label these slide switches, the owner couldn’t remember which side was which, and, sometimes, which block/track it controlled!

I experimented with push-button on/off switches for block control. My results were mostly neutral. It worked for the most part, but having gouged myself in my stomach several times while being bent over the layout I began thinking of Atlas’ Slide Switches.

If you find a better switch (that works!!!), let me know. I’ll see that you receive a Congressional Medal of Honor.

On the Hub City Central’s old Yard, built by the Late John Ruple, John had used a three-position, “Center Off, Right Power-Left Power” switch. I seem to recall those switches controlled direction of the train in the yard. If you wanted to see an example of an explosion in a spaghetti factory, you should have looked under those yard modules. It took me five years to figure out how to get power from the control end of the yard to the main line/yard lead at the opposite end. Good night.

In closing

Wiring is not something to be taken lightly, and you can’t simply “throw it all up there” under the layout and everything is just “ducky”. “Faster” is not necessarily better when you wire up your layout. In the case of wiring, taking your time and making certain of what you are doing and double---and triple---checking your work is tantamount. This is advice that should be followed from adding the Buss wire right up through connecting other trackage to electricity.

I wish I could say I was kidding about how complicated things will become as you add in other “extras” like Switch Motors, Crossing Signals, Block Signals, structure lighting, etc., as you go on, but I’m not. I hesitate to mention this point, but DCC systems have simplified some of these aspects. There are Switch motor and Block Signal Systems available that are DCC-controlled and they make wiring much simpler----I believe some crossing signals are DCC-controlled now. I don’t mention this to make a positive point on DCC; my purpose here is to inform you of every option. What you decide to pursue is your decision. After all, I’m still flitting back and forth on some things connected to this subject that I haven’t made my mind up on yet.

I will touch on switch motors, lighting and signaling very briefly farther on in this series.

“73”

Keith