Wiring a Walthers TT for DCC

[Anonymous]

I am both new to the hobby and to DCC but after many years of planning have decided to build that first layout. I was thinking with the ease of DCC to just wire the bridge of the turn table off of one power pack and the the feeder tracks to the round house with a seperate power pack and thereby avoiding a short circuit. Is the right idea or is there an easier way. The scale is N and I will be using code 80 Atlas track with the Atlas commander DCC and power supply. Thanks

[Pennsy58]

Not sure if I am confused with the multiple power pakcs you describe. Heres how I did mine.
DCC uses just one power supply to run your trains. If you have a very big layout, you may have an additional power supply called a booster. The booster simply keeps the power from dropping to low from resistance over a long run of wiring.

With DCC their is one central wiring run under the layout. Commonly referred to as the main bus wiring. I have short feeder wires running off of the main bus to the individual tracks leading into the roundhouse. A seperate feeder wire also runs to the bridge track . In the feeder wiring to the bridge I installed a reversing module. This module automatically reverses polarity as needed thereby avoiding a short if you turn the bridge all the way around etc. This is the same reversing module you would use for a loop application in DCC.

The turntable motor is wired to an old DC power pack to run the motor. This means you have to eyeball the line up to tracks but no big deal to me.

Hope this is of some assistance to you.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice Pennsy58. That helps a lot. Still learning about DCC and those special wiring issues like reverse loops.

[Pennsy58]

Your welcome. The quickest thing I learned about DCC was to ask .

Reverse loops are really an easy task. Run a seperate wiring feeder to the loop. Have the loop isolated from the rest of the trackage by leaving a gap in the rails. I simply left out the rail joiners both when the loop starts and when it returns, In other words, the loop track is in no way receiving power from track leading up to it, only from the feeder wires underneath.

Then of course in the feeder wires leading up to the loop track install a reversing module in line. As I mentioned before, what the reversing module does is detect the change in polarity as the engine enters or exits the loop and it electronically reverses positive and negative power to the rails as needed. No interuption in engine movement and no short occurs. I use the MRC reversing module and it works well. At the time it was the cheapest. MRC included instructions on how to wire up the loop too.