Saturday 18 December 2010

Brewhouse Quay: Wiring fun


K_point_wiring_01, originally uploaded by nevardmedia.

Brewhouse Quay update.....

The materials have arrived, so I'm looking at the most complex bit of track well in advance to plan the wiring and where isolating breaks will need to be cut into the rails and how power will be fed to various sections. Slitting the sections will probably be easier after laying due to the fine nature of code 55.

Point operation will be via manual miniature yard levers as in Nigel Burkin's feature in the April 2010 edition of Model Rail. Polarity switching will be under the baseboard, again as per Nigel's feature.

Whilst I'm not new to building my own track, I've never been bold enough to try something like this. Construction doesn't bother me, but the wiring does as little, so any thoughts from people that find this aspect interesting feel free to feed back.

I've uploaded the  multi-layered Photoshop PSD file here to allow the blue isolating  section bits to be added or hidden should anyone want to illustrate any  ideas - credit due course the final write up goes without saying! I need to consider check rails too not shown here.

4 comments:

  1. I built exactly this type of formation a few years ago. I found that the K-crossing inside the triangle can be permanantly wired to the "slip rail" furthest from it, which probably doesn't need an isolating break at all. The common crossings in the diamond can be switched by wiring them to the common crossings of the points that feed trains across them.

    If I remember correctly, I had to cut isolating gaps in the checkrails.

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  2. If you are using DCC you could use of the Hex Frog Juicers. These will automatically switch the polarity of those gapped sections as needed.

    http://www.handlaidtrack.com/Hex-Frog-Juicer-Automatic-Frog-Polarity-Switcher-p/hfj001.htm

    Cheers
    Darren

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  3. Thank you for the wisdom here! I have just started laying the copper clad now, quite therapeutic and nice an easy with the trackbed removable from the main board with the high backdrop.

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  4. Further to my coment above, neither of the K-crossings needs any isolating breaks as their polarity is independent of the common crossings. The same is true for the outer slip rail.

    The outer slip rail and the inner K crossing will always be the same polarity and so can be bonded together.

    If you wire it as I suggest, then it will be impossible to have conflicting train movements across the diamond. If I was any use with computer graphics programs I'd draw you a diagram, but I am strictly a "back of an envelope" man ..

    ReplyDelete

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