Reply to "BRATS RR v2"

BRATS RR v2

Funny the things that delay you. I’m sure that all of you are much better organizers than I am. But somewhere in this mountain of boxes are the barrier strips which go under the tables and are ssential for the electrical connections. But where oh where are they? Lost a whole bunch of time to looking for them and still haven’t found them. Ordered some on Amazon. Not a lot, because as soon as I order a lot, I’ll find the ones I “lost”.

And how did I get 6 180 watt bricks to go along with my 2 Z4K’s? Did I actually buy that many? Did a gremlin give them to me? But that’s what I found when looking for the barrier strips. Yes, I know that one 180 watt brick is worth about a gajillion barrier strips. They’re just bigger and easier to find.

Anyway, the 110 volt wiring has been done underneath the table and there are 5 switches to turn it on and off. Power supplies will be on the first 2 switches and accessories on the last 3. So the picture of my lighted buildings on the “strip” took more work than just dropping the wires.

And I got my Vinylbed down under a lot of the track including the 2 loops around the amusement park. And the wires are dropped from those tracks so they can be wired in once I get the power up and running. One Z4K is on a lower table and that will power the 2 large loops. As you can see, I placed 4 Lionel 180 watt bricks near the “command central”. I’m not quite sure how I’ll wire them in, but I am sure that is more power than what I’ll need. And I’d like to figure out how to drop one of them to 14 volts for the switches, but it’s probably just easier to get an accessory transformer or use the 14 volt output of the Z4K. Or maybe even a ZW. After all, you can look at the handle of a ZW and see if you moved it to 14 volts output.

RR Track is a really nice program and was a great help. But there’s something about actually laying down the track, looking at it, and wondering if there isn’t something you missed. If you go back to what I had down on this straight away last year, there were 2 passing sidings. And one wasn’t ideal because of the way it connected to the dogbone. Now I’ve got three 4 way switches from Ross, and I’m thinking that maybe there’s a better use for them than just dead end sidings. Like maybe a 4 track pass through yard. Each of the sidings would be about 17 feet, so lots of room to park trains. So I just laid the 4 ways there and am thinking about it. What do you think?

Gerry