Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Wiring diagram

Layout wiring diagram

The great thing about micro model railways is the lack of wiring. It's a job I hate, not because I find it difficult, just dull. Lots of joining bits of wire followed by wondering why things don't work as expected. In fact I dislike pretty much everything electrical, especially debugging old cars which make no sense to me at all.

Anyway, like it or not I need wires to channel electric juice to the locomotives or the whole thing will be a static diorama, so I had to get on with it.

If you read articles in the model railway mags, electrical stuff will be prefaced with some mention that it's all a mystery to the author with the implication that he just threw wires and solder at the layout until it all worked. Alternatively the writer will be the sort of person to not only colour codes the wire but tags them and has a folder showing schematic diagrams.

Me, I like to keep things simple which leads to very few rules. Those there are are simply applied repeatedly until electric gets everywhere I want it. At this point I should mention I'm doing this with DC, you can keep your fancy DCC thingamybobs thank very much. If I want my trains to make noise, I'll do it myself in the style of Ivor the Engine...

Anyway, the rules are that all feeds are at the toe end of the point. Facing points, for example a crossover, need a complete electrical break between them or the little electric people bump into each other as they run away from the feeds and explode into sparks and things stop working.

What this means for the layout in a box is that there are feeds where I have put triangles and breaks where the double lines are. Simple but effective. A bit like me really.

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