Wiring Thoughts

[BILLBOBBOY1]

I am just wondering if there are any of you out there whose table, when you look under it, looks like a large pot of spaghetti exploded!  Before I began the wiring job, I did a lot of reading on the subject.  When I started, everything was neat.  But as things evolved, it seemed to get out of control.  I drilled holes in most of the support boards to allow wiring to thread through to eliminate dangling wires.  Also, I am using those plastic wire supports to keep the runs neat and against the support boards.  All the wiring runs are labeled.

The mess occurs under the table right behind my transformers where I have several terminal boards.  The wires to the terminal boards are arriving from all reaches of the table.  I have wired 21 blocks and 21 turnouts.  By the time I finish the accessories the view should be similar to a compressed milky way.

I'm curious to know if anyone else has ended up with the "unplanned" wiring mess. 

Bill

[Dave Farquhar]

Absolutely. I'm convinced that some people are very good at keeping wiring neat, but most people aren't.

I'm a computer professional by trade, and I've seen some really neat wiring in racks. There is no polite word to describe what my wiring looks like. We have people who do nothing but wiring, because they do a very nice job of it. Their wiring looks like art.

A few years ago I was involved in a project that involved moving a few dozen computers over a 3-day weekend. The wiring was a bit of a mess, although to my eye it really didn't look all that bad. (I didn't do much of it.) At about midnight one of the managers decided he didn't like it and was going to do a better job. We ripped out all of the wires, and spent about three hours rewiring the rack his way. In the end, his way didn't look any better than the way we'd done it before. With the old way, one side of the rack was neater than the other side. With his way, the mess just moved to the other side. And at that point, there was no way we were going to rip it out and try again--we had to get those computers running, and that was a lot more important than what a bunch of wiring nobody was ever going to see looked like.

When it comes to wiring my layout, I did what I could to keep the wiring from dangling too much, labeled everything so I could find it (and color-coded too, when possible), but making it neat requires skill that I just don't seem to have. I probably could develop it, but I'd rather spend my time learning things that make the stuff on top of the table look good. I'm probably the only person who'll ever see the wiring.

[kpolak]

The important thing is that you can find where everything goes.  If there is trouble...It doesn't matter how nice it looks, as long as you can diagnose and repair the problem quickly, and with the least amount of self-inflicted hair loss.

Kurt

[ED WHITFORD]

Well this is what I did I took our layout & broke it down into sections then ran the wires from each individual section to the block. Each section is labeled & colored a different.

I also ran some wire that go to nothing that way when I do add things on the wire is already there all I need to do is the little bit of hook up needed to get whatever working.

I also used that automotive type of wire housing for the wires. Don't remember what it is called I just know if you look under your hood you would see your wires running thru it.

Take care.

[gvdobler]

Home Depot (or any) sells a clip that is used to hold conduit to a wall, etc.  It only goes part of the way around a 3/4 inch pipe (bigger available.)  If you mount them under the table (flush mount) they have about a 1/4 inch gap between the clip and the plywood. They make excellent wiring raceways to add and subtract wire from. It holds the wire up against the bottom of the table and out of sight.  I got the idea looking at all the cable at my feet at my computer table.

[ADCX Rob]

I am just wondering if there are any of you out there whose table, when you look under it, looks like a large pot of spaghetti...

...I'm curious to know if anyone else has ended up with the "unplanned" wiring mess. 

Bill

Mine does.  All 25 turnouts have 3 wires home-run to the controllers, there are lockons all over 4 loops  / 10 blocks / 5 sidings, some with several of the small gauge wires clipped into them.  The accessory runs are all home-run too, with ~ 7 barrier strips under the platform for buss taps.  All the early wiring is mostly green jacketed 20 gauge(too small) and when that ran out I switched to a spool of 18 ga. blue, so there is NO color coding... it's a mess.  This was all wired up in ~ 1972 when I was 10! 

Remarkably, there have been no issues since 1972 until this week.  A phantom intermittent short on the far side of loop 2 was puzzling me.  Close inspection revealed a milk can rolling between the center & one outside rail.

Rob 

[RRCharlie]

I was sorting though one of my (many) piles of stuff yesterday and came across one of my old magazines that did a feature on a train layout that showed the wires coming into the terminal blocks. Did it look like a box of exploded cooked spaghetti? Most definitely!!!! Can I find the magazine today to scan and post a picture? Of course not!!! CRS or Anheiusers or both.

Mel Hazen; Jax, FL

[dsmith]

I started my current layout two years ago and it was all nice, neat and color coded for about the first 6 months.  Since then it has turned into a jumble of wires.  Now there is no color coding, I just use the colors of whatever wire I come up with at the time.  The control panel has tripled in size.  I had no idea I would end up with so many accessory and control circuits, lighting, block control, ect.  Because most wires aren't labled and there is no longer any color coding, if I need to troubleshoot a problem, I follow the wiring around the layout.   It has been a lot of fun though and I have learned a lot.  If I ever start all over again on a new layout, I feel that I would do a much better job of neatly layout the wiring, color coding  and labeling everything.