i wish i could be more help. but if it's a book you need , it's HOW TO WIRE YOUR MODEL RAILROAD by linn westcott. it's a kalmback book. if i remember right linn is in the model railroad hall of fame. the book is very good . i refer to it sometimes even for my 3 rail layout.
walt
ps. kalmbach has other books for wiring also, check it out.
I suggest the Complete Service Manual for American Flyer Trains. There's quite a bit in there about wiring, with special attention to the reversing-loop problem peculiar to 2-rail track. You can find it on Amazon and on Abebooks, but it's not cheap.
I would urge you to err on the side of too many blocks, don't do anything that involves running between blocks powered by different transformer outputs, and include each turnout into the block on the facing-point end of the turnout.
Bob Nelson
Wow, ambitious layout. Wiring AF is super simple. Your base is the neutral, and you will have a constant and a variable voltage. Generally speaking, base (neutral) wire will be black; the hot wire will be yellow. The outside rail will usually be the neutral base, and the inside wire the hot variable. The 690 connectors work well for applying power to the track but a spade connector wedged on the underside where the rails come together works great and is cheap. I put a power connector about every three feet. There are loads of ways to get the power to the layout. I ran separate wires to the accessories and it works but if I had to do it over again, I would run a LARGE neutral to a terminal strip on the layout. I would also run a LARGE hot to a terminal strip. AF accessories mix the use of making the circuit to operate the accessory with both the neutral and the hot. This could save you a lot of extra wires running from the transformers.
On accessories, black neutral, yellow light or function, green main function, red second function, for example on your switches, from the switch housing the terminals are marked but if not they go black red yellow green. Black base, red – switch to siding – yellow light – green switch to main.
For reverse loops there is a means to do it with a reverse loop relay and what it does in essence is reverse the polarity on the track. I would just avoid them. Some operating accessories interface with the track like the talking stations, the semaphores, cow on the track, and they operate by providing or interrupting the neutral on an isolated section of track.
AF transformers are great. The 30B pumps out a reliable 300 watts. For cheap reliable power my favorite is the venerable 8B. 100 watts, circuit breaker, dirt cheap, and will run all day without getting hot.
The Complete Service Manual for American Flyer Trains is a great book, but somewhat pricey. It has all the wiring diagrams for accessories and track. There are a few sites on the web that provide guidance as well. I’ll look for them and get a link. RFGCO is one as well as Portlines Hobbies.
Good luck and keep us posted.
Jim
Please bear with me while I try to clarify some electrical terminology. There are three terms that are often used interchangeably but which have rather different meanings: neutral, common, and ground. A neutral is the conductor in a multi-wire circuit whose voltage is the average of all the other voltages. Thus there cannot be a neutral in a 2-wire circuit. A common return is a return conductor which is common to several circuits. A ground is a connection to the earth or to the frame of a vehicle. The problem is that North American residential electric services have a conductor (the white one) which has all three of these functions. It is a grounded neutral common.
On any one of our train layouts, we are likely to have a common, which is only rarely a neutral or a grounded conductor, although there are good reasons sometimes for the layout common to have each of these functions. On 3-rail layouts, things work much better if the outside rails are the common. On 2-rail layouts, like postwar American Flyer, one of the rails is more-or-less arbitrarily considered to be the common, except that American Flyer long ago decided to use the word "base" instead. This name is not used for "common" to my knowledge outside of the Flyer world and has long been used instead by the electrical world as the name of the control terminal of a transistor. But, it can be considered to be a synonym for "common" when talking about those trains.
None of this is meant to dispute Jim's post above, just to point out that what he calls "base" or "neutral" is, strictly speaking, "common".
Good Point, I speak in AF and not so well in Lionelese
The facing-point end is the end with one track. The reason for including the turnout in the block on the facing-point end is so that, whichever way the turnout is aligned, it will be included in the two blocks that the train will pass through. If the turnout is part of either of the other two blocks on the trailing-point side, then there is a situation where all three blocks must be powered for the train to get through. This means that another train cannot be stopped, unpowered, on the block that includes the turnout.
I'm afraid I don't understand your comment about a train entering from the curve.
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