Wire is a model too

[HO-Velo]

Lion,  

Your wiring photos remind me of when I was a pup' out at the "Oil patch" in the 70s.  Many of the old plant's control rooms were still operating with circa 1950s and 1960s control equipment, some even older.  Inside the control room cabinets were a mixture of electrical and pnematic devices.  I didn't envy those "Wire skinners" and "air heads" when it came time to open one of those cabinets to trace down and repair a malfunction.

regards, Peter

[Phoebe Vet]

It's nice to see a well organized wiring job.

So many people subcontract the job to nest building mice.

[BroadwayLion]

The pipe organ was built in 1920. It was installed (used) in our church in 1960. It was sold and removed by someone for rebuilding when the church was renovated in 2000. That person simply cut the cables between the console and the organ proper, leaving them under the floor platform.

The LION came and removed the cables, and coiled them up, and put them under the train table for future use.

Now the future is here and the LION has pulled these cables out to use them on the railroad.

And if you model steam or anything up to say 1960 and want to model your signal relay room with authentic cable correct for this era, then take a look at these cables.

The cable is made entirely without plastic or rubber of any sort. The outer casing is a braid of string painted gray. I could not "unbraid" it with a bodkin (or marlinspike) as I could with other cables, so I had to slice it open with a knife. (Actually I used a scaple, it being much sharper, I did not need any pressure on such a knife.)

Inside there were waxed paper wrapings , which I also sliced with the knife. Twisting them a little they fell to the floor in a huge golden pile that looked like an infestation of shrimp. Inside of this there were five twists of 11 wires each and another twist of 12 wires, making 67 conductors. Our organist confirms that this would be correct since each manual has 66 keys on it. I twisted these free and had six twists of wire. The individual conductors are heavily waxed and are insulated by a wrap of fine string filiments.

These bundles were terminated at the relay closet. There is one relay for each station platform. You are looking at the downtown relays, the uptown relays are in the row below this. Look at the paper backers and you can see the wiring diagram printed there for my guidance. So from each 11 wire twist, six conductors went to the downtown station, and five went to the uptown stations. The other end of each twist followed the layout fascia to the station it served where there is another cable termination. Once these were installed, I had to test each conductor to be sure I was terminating it at the correct binding post.

This particular fascia is on the rear of the main table, and I wll not cover it with a finished fascia, since I would want people to see my vintage wires, and for them to give due homage to the crafty LION that built the layout.

Additional conductors are bound together in "Cableing Cabinets" This end is at the main relay board, the other is in a remote location. These wires are used for switch machines and other appliances of "modern" railroading. Thes are not named after stations, but after neary by cross streets so that these wires cannot be confused with the ones that go to the stations.

As for the wires going to each station: One conductor is enervated by the master clock (if the next station is not occupied) and releases the train from this station. Another conductor is activated by a track magnet to activate the relays that protect the next station and release the protection from the previous station. The other three conductors power the signals. Actually there will be about three signals between stations since that looks good, but they will all operate as a single signal because that is easier to build.

ROAR