Pine Creek Railroad posted:Arnold,
Right there with ya buddy, mad man control panels all the way. Just getting started on mine for the new Train Room layout.
PCRR/Dave
Ya got to love it!
Dave, your wiring looks a lot better than mine.
As bad as mine is, I did do some good things. My feeder wires are pretty thick, either 14 or 16 gauge as I recall. I believe that is good for getting plenty of power to the 2 main lines from the MTH Z4000 transformer, which is a good one.
I have feeder wires for every 3 feet of track, which is a lot for 2 main lines (separately blocked and connected by several switch tracks with fiber pins in center rails), and my layout is about 36 feet long and 3 to 4 feet wide with reverse loops on each end of the 2 main lines. I also have 8 sidings, each of which is separately blocked and independently powered, by 2 post war ZW transformers.
Here is my dilemma and where I went wrong. With that many feeder wires, you cannot do your wiring like you would for a simple layout under the Christmas tree. If you look at my wiring mess, my many thick feeder wires are soddered to 2 copper strips in front of the transformer (one strip for ground or common, and one strip for power). What I should have done for conventional wiring is run a thick ground (or common) wire and a power wire the whole length of the layout under the bench work, and run much shorter feeder wires from those thick wires to every 3 feet of track. That would have eliminated most of the wiring mess near my transformers, and greatly reduced the amount of wire needed.
Another mistake I made is to use lock ons instead of soddering the feeder wires to the track.
Using Atlas switches for turning power on and off for my 8 sidings is another mistake. Those Atlas switches are intended for HO, not O Gauge trains. However, they have functioned OK.
I made other wiring mistakes but that is enough for now.
