Been a while! I've mentioned I don't much like soldering, but I should say, I don't like soldering track - it takes a large iron or gun, and a knack I haven't developed.
On the other hand, I do enjoy wiring, which includes LOTS of soldering, but light soldering - very different. Wiring is fun and rewarding, but it goes s-l-o-w-l-y! Wiring the track power is fairly straightforward - a 14ga bus runs all through the benchwork, and 18ga feeders run down from the track at about 3-foot intervals to the bus.
The wiring above is for the turnouts and sensors of the 4-track hidden staging area.
The turnouts in this area I want to operate together by selecting one of the 4 tracks, or a "route", and have the turnouts align as required for that route. This simplifies the control, but complicates the wiring a bit, requiring a series of diodes, which you see mounted on the vertical board at the top of the photo. If you're interested in a further explanation of how this works,
CLICK HERE.
The sensors are near the end of each of the hidden tracks. This is a kit made for this purpose by
Green Steam Products in California. It consists of the sensors, the (2) control circuit boards in the middle of the photo, and LEDs on the control panel.
The control panel above is a temporary stand-in for the real thing, which will be much nicer looking! While the trains themselves will be controlled by hand-held "throttles", the secondary controls and indicators will be located at various points around the layout on panels like this one. You can see left to right: (2) rows of LEDs (red for "stop" and yellow for "almost there"), (4) toggles to turn off power to each track individually (idling sound-equiped locomotives can get pretty noisy in bunches!), a control knob to select the route to one of the (4) tracks, and a momentary contact pushbutton to throw the switches to activate the route.
Just to the upper right of the control knob is a single toggle and pushbutton pair, to control a single turnout in the area, and on the right a hole for a switch to turn on camera power - a camera will display what's going on under here on the TV.
Below is the back side of the control panel.
My friend Don taught me years ago the importance of neat wiring, and I learned a lot from watching him build the flawless electrical systems on our race car, back in our dirt track racing days. He also supplied me with a seemingly never-ending roll of 4-conductor phone cable way back then, and it's still going strong - I use it for low current draw things like sensors and LEDs.
