need help with DCC & barrier strips please!

[Anonymous]

hello everyone, i have a dilema. i have a 8' x 11' "L" shaped layout. i have divided my layout into 3 sections useing the 3 barrier strips. i have placed one at the long end, one in the middle where the yard is, and one at the other end of the "L". my question is this.. how do i connect power from each strip, and what wires go to what? the barrier strips i have are the 20 terminal. they connect up and down, not side to side. any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks![:)]

[cacole]

Can you provide a manufacturer name and catalog number for those terminal strips? I'm not sure what you mean when you say they go up and down instead of side to side. Depending on how much wiring you have accomplished up to this point, connecting power might require some reworking of your existing connections.

You basically need a power buss consisting of two wires running from one terminal strip to the next and to your power pack, but if you have connected track feeder wires to different points on these terminal strips you're going to need jumpers between them.

If I can see a picture of the terminal strips you're using, it will be easier to help.

[Anonymous]

thanks for replying. the barrier strip im useing is a radio shack brand. i will include a link so you can view it. thanks!

http://gallery59028.fotopic.net/c160245.html

[cacole]

OK, those are the same barrier strips I use, except I get mine from a different source than Radio Shack.

What you need to do is run a pair of wires from your DCC system to the first barrier strip, from the first barrier strip to the second barrier strip, etc., until you have them all connected to the power source.

I use crimp-on connectors to make these connections easier, so you may want to consider getting some of these and a crimping tool. Get crimp connectors that will hold two 18-gauge wires. These will be the blue connectors. Home Depot is a cheaper source than Radio Shack if you have one in your vicinity.

As you daisy-chain the power feed from your DCC system to each of the barrier strips, the best way to do this is to crimp two wires together in the first terminal, and then run the second wire to the next barrier strip. Keep doing this with both conductors, jumping from barrier strip to barrier strip.

For simplicity, I would place one of the wires in the top contact and the other wire under the bottom screw. Keeping them at opposite ends of the barrier strip makes it easier to keep them separate as to which one is positive and which is negative. You might even find it handy to mark the bottom of the layout with a + and - sign at each barrier strip.

I"m assuming you're going to use some type of wire where you can keep the two conductors separated by some type of color coding. For example, if you use 18-gauge speaker wire from Wal-mart, Home Depot, or another source, you can keep the conductors separate even though this wire has a clear plastic coating, because one conductor is silver colored wire and the other is gold color. I call the silver ground and the gold positive.

On a barrier strip with 8 sets of terminals, I place jumper wires across the top 4 connectors for positive, and jumper the bottom 4 connectors as negative, essentially making the top 4 screws positive and the bottom 4 negative. Then it's just a matter of running track feeder wires to the positive and negative terminals on this barrier strip.

As you connect the feeder wires, picture in your mind a locomotive on the track running in a clockwise direction. The right-hand rail will always be positive (the gold colored wire) and the left rail will be negative (silver wire). Another way to look at it is, on a full circle, the inner rail would be positive and the outer rail negative.

As long as you don't have any turn-around loops or wyes, all of the wiring will use this rule, even as you turn off onto sidings.

[Anonymous]

This is extremely useful for me as well...

In a DC layout (prior to what I'm now building) I used insulated rail joiners to create power blocks. While I plan to use DCC and a Dremel tool for gaps, do I need blocks? How great a distance between? One rail or both?

[cacole]

With DCC you don't need to insulate blocks unless you still want to isolate sidings so you can park non-DCC locomotives on them, or park sound equipped locomotives and be able to turn their sound off. The only other time you would need a block would be at a turn-around wye or loop.

When I wired the Cochise & Western Model Railroad Club's 20 x 40 foot HO-scale layout, I used insulated rail joiners on all sidings and at blocks because the layout is wired so people can operate either conventional DC or DCC.

I have been helping a friend wire a home layout for DCC, and he has needed to insulate the inner two rails that diverge from the frog on turnouts because he has so many run-around loops and wyes on it. If you don't have anything but sidings, there is no need gap rails for DCC.

[Anonymous]

I have an around the wall layout in a 13'X15' room. The shelf is anywhere from 30" to 18" deep. I've broken the layout into 4 blocks so if there is a short in one it doesn't shut down the whole layout. I come out of my Digitrax DCS100 with 12 ga wire to the PM4-2, from there I use 14 ga wire to a terminal strip and then go to the track with 18 ga. I've had no trouble with "not enough voltage" at any place on the layout. A friend of mine (whose layout was in MR) has his wired on one block and if someone runs up on a switch the wrong way, we all quit running, and this layout is 20'X24'.