terminal joiners

[Anonymous]

Hey Folks,

Got my track all laid out. I have 16 terminal rail joiners ( atlas type with about 18" of wire connected to them. After I run all these wires under my bench work, what is the best way to connect them all to my power source?
Thanks Craig

[cwclark]

the use of terminal strips is the best...you can get them from digi-key, radio shack, mouser or jameco..they come in all sorts of varieties....you can get them from 2 terminals to about 60 terminals per terminal block....I take two of them (one for the - side of the pack and the other for the + side)...then connect a wire from the pack to terminal to terminal and then the feeder wires from the track to each terminal...here's a good place to order them from www.partsexpress.com type in the word "terminal strip" and it will take you to a list of these parts....chuck

[MisterBeasley]

Terminal strips are the way to go if your wires are all pretty close together. If you've got the other extreme, a shelf layout where the wires are all pretty far apart, then you need to run a pair of long "bus" wires down the layout. The wires from one rail go to one bus wire, and so on. Note that the wires on those Atlas connectors are very thin, so you will get loss through them. You might want to get some colored tape and mark which rail is which under the layout, because you must keep them separate and it's easy to get it wrong when all the wires are black, like the Atlas ones.

[davekelly]

Color code wires? Mister Beasley - who ever heard of such nonsense!!!!

Seriously - color coding wires is a great habit to get into. While it might not seem a big deal on a small layout it is a life saver as things get more complicated. Of course there are times when I wish I was more disciplined about it. (ie: hmmm out of red wire, but I have this purple wire and it is going to the positive rail - p positive, p purple - excellent ---- of course forgetting that the station Platform lighting has purple wires too - p platform, p-purple -- guess I'll never learn!!).

[nbrodar]

Bus wires are a good way to go. I use black for the common wire, and red for the control wire. (i use cab control, with a common rail.)

Nick

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info. Yeh, my wires are pretty far apart, so it sounds like the bus wire will be the way to go. Is there a preferred gauge wire to use for the bus wire?

[rlandry6]

14 Ga. minimum for the buss. 12 would be better, and just a little more cost-wise. No one ever got in trouble by using bigger wire..

[dgwinup]

QUOTE: Originally posted by nbrodar

Bus wires are a good way to go. I use black for the common wire, and red for the control wire. (i use cab control, with a common rail.)

Nick

I've read a lot recently about using buss wires for layout wiring. I understand the principle involved for DCC, but with DC cab control/common rail wiring, how do you separate the buss wire for block control? Seems to me that you would have to run a buss wire for EACH block you want to control. In N scale, blocks are not often very long (maybe 3 sections of flex track, or about 9' - and that's a LONG block). Each block has to be controlled by a spdt switch, so I don't see any advantage in using a buss wire with block control. I don't even understand how you could use a single buss wire for mulltiple blocks! Am I missing something here?

Darrell, wired, but quiet...for now

[nbrodar]

I model in HO, so the blocks are larger. I have one buss wire for the common rail, and a seperate control buss for each block. The control buss runs the entire length of the block. This makes it easy to drop extra feeders, the larger wire also limits the power loss over long runs.

I used 12 gauge for the common buss and 14 guage for the control wires.

Nick