How Do I Properly Wire a Siding

[willjayna]

Just to give you the background as to why I am asking this question. I started building my first layout which is a fairly simplistic track plan and I wanted to incorporate a working powered siding.

The track plan is 22' X 10' in the shape of an L with 1 mainline and a half loop up top of the L and another half loop and the bottom short part of the L. My siding runs parellel with my two straight sections (one northbound and one southbound).

I currently use life-like snap track that is soldered into 27'' sections and each section is already wired using I believe 18 gauge speaker wire. I ran the wire underneath each section and solder to the rails in the middle of each section. I then connect the sections using male and female couplers so most of my layout is already wired.

With all that being said my siding is already wired with the exception of my north switch off of the mainline onto the siding and my south switch off the siding onto the mainline so in essence my siding is wired but sort of isolated from the rest of my layout. What is the best way to wire my siding in? Should I wire sections of mainline and sections of siding together or just finish wiring my switches to match the siding and mainlines?

Thanks 

[7j43k]

A question:

 

DC or DCC?

Because a siding is often a place where you want to park a train/engine while you run another one.  And the above question does have an impact.  Or/and:  You can say you will NEVER want to have more than one engine on the layout at a time.  Not too many people do, but that also is a wiring option.

But the problem you're facing is pretty common.  And it must be solvable or the other guys couldn't be running trains.

Also, there's books on wiring layouts.  You should pick one up, not just to help with this question, but others you haven't thought of.  Something like this should be helpful:

https://kalmbachhobbystore.com/product/book/12491

 

 

Ed

[MisterBeasley]

First of all, "snap track" is made by Atlas, not Life-Like, and they are different.

What kind of turnouts are you using?  Some, like Peco "electro frog" turnouts, behave differently from others and need to be wired accordingly.

Are your sidings single-ended or do they come back on to the main line at the other end?  Technically, a single ended track is a spur, not a siding, but sometimes we use the terms interchangeably.

When you say you want to "wire" the siding, how do you want it to behave?  Do you always want power, do you only want power when the turnouts are thrown for the siding, or do you want to manually switch the power on and off with a toggle?

I agree with having a "kill switch" for power to the siding.  It's very convenient, even when running DCC, to park an engine or a whole train on a "dead" track while running another train elsewhere on the layout.

[rrinker]

 Can you post a picture of the layout? even if it's a crude hand-drawn image on paper and then you take a picture of it with your phone.

 I'm visualizing a dogbone sort of layout with a siding between the two straight runs along the shange, connected to both sides. In that case you are creating reverse loops.

                       --Randy