well i have had a little time on my hand to do a little work on the layout. its not much but drop more of the feeders for my wirng and i still have more to do. good thing is all i have left to drop is wires for the yard and round house.i did decide to go ahead and put the 5th mainline up. no work done on it yet.i also put the last remaining switch i had in and i have a few pics of that to show. plus i got a few items for the layout to. well here goes, and hope you like.
got this at the dollar tree for 1 dollar. i'm going to experiment with this on the layout
this is for the mainline somewhere
got these at the dollar tree to for 1 dollar. little bird houses but i plan to use these for windmills. i saw some on the interstate in pa going west on one of the interstates. well they dont quite look like them but this is close enough. for what i want to model after
this where i will place them on the curve coming into the room.
these are some sail boats i'm going to place in the lake that i put on there somewhere. also 1 dolar at dollar tree.
this is the light house i got to place somewhere by the boats in the water. also 1 dollar at you know it dollar tree.
this is where i put the last switch in at. just have not connected the spur track coming off of the switch yet.
Nice pics Reggie. Intermodel crane looks nice.
"Lionel trains are the standard of the world" - Jousha Lionel Cowen
RIP Chewy - best dog I ever had.
Good job! Your really coming along with the layout. You gotta watch that $1 Store, you will end up having to expand the layout. I find my self doing the same thing, walking around lookin at stuff in the store wondering how I can use it on the layout.
Congradulations on the Falcons! Keep On Truckin
Don
God bless TCA 05-58541 Benefactor Member of the NRA, Member of the American Legion, Retired Boss Hog of Roseyville , KC&D Qualified
well got some more work done on the layout. 2 nights in a row man i love my wife.
1st - i finished dropping the rest of the wires to the yard, the spur off the intermodal yard, the spurs off the yard, and round house .
2nd - i put in all the bumpers for the roundhouse, the test track, intermodal spur, and three extra spurs.
3rd - took down the old wires that were still hanging from the first layout that i had done.
here are a few pics that i took of the little bit of work that i done. hope you like.
these are pics of the 3 spurs with newly placed bumpers
these are of the test track
these are of the roundhouse with newly placed bumpers
these are of the consist i have running now. it consist of a: k-line csx sd60, 1 set of the atlas gundersun twin stacks, 2 lionel husky stacks, 4 lionel 50 ton die cast hoppers, 2 lionel 4 bay cylindrical hoppers, and 1 mth csx caboose it smokes and lights up.
this is all for now. well i should say tomorrow.
What is with digital cameras and bad pictures? It seems all the digital images I see are very low quality. Maybe its the closeness? Nice pics Reggie.
magicman710 - the trick is to flood the room with light, and turn the camera's flash off.
Reggie - thanks for sharing.
well after all day saturday and sunday maybe 8 hours total time. i have all the feeder wires dropped, all the buss wires ran, and the 2 connected together ready to be connected to the transformers. i'm that much closer to getting my trains up and running. do not have the switches wired yet as that is the next step to do. i have pics of the feeders connected to the tracks and the wires under the train layout. the push in spade connectors worked great, and were alot cheaper than the gargraves push in connectors. instead of soldering i used tap splices to connect the feeder wires to the buss wires. it kept down on the mess as i am not good at soldering. hope you like.
Nice work Reggie. I always like seeing update photos. It looks like you've accomplished much this past weekend.
fifedog wrote: magicman710 - the trick is to flood the room with light, and turn the camera's flash off.
I have been having the same problem with my camera, until I found out how to turn the flash off!!!
Reggie, I'm not talking about your pics. I'm talking about all digital pics in general.
magicman710 wrote: fifedog wrote: magicman710 - the trick is to flood the room with light, and turn the camera's flash off.I have been having the same problem with my camera, until I found out how to turn the flash off!!! Reggie, I'm not talking about your pics. I'm talking about all digital pics in general.
i'm headed back to the room as we all know it as the train room from a few days break from it as i wore myself out from the last visit last weekendt to do a little more wiring. i have a question before i start to work again. i know the displays in the zw pamplets show phasing the ground for both transformers. my ? is can/should i use one ground wire for all the mainline power or should i have 1 per mainline.
It depends on the construction of your layout. If it's build with several loops which are not connected (in other words, you have multiple single track layouts together on one table) it's most convieniant to see them as seperate layouts and wire the hot and ground wire for each layout seperately. Phasing is not necessary here, because the tracks operate like multiple single layouts. You can't use a shared ground buswire however.
As soon as you connect the tracks with eachother by a switch, loop or even a simple activation section in the track (crossing) those "seperate" loops are connected and you should get your transformers phased to eachother. In this case, with the transformers phased, you can use a single ground buswire for all the tracks connected.
Phasing is simple done with a lightbulb (20 volts) and 2 wires connected to it. Power up your transformers and connect the ground from the first with the ground from the second transformer with the lamp. If the bulb lights up, the plug of the transformer needs to be turned 180 degrees. Then do the same with the second and third transformer untill every transformer has it's ground on the same side. (in other words, connecting your bulb to any of the ground outlets on your transformers doesn't make it light up.)
daan wrote: As soon as you connect the tracks with eachother by a switch, loop or even a simple activation section in the track (crossing) those "seperate" loops are connected and you should get your transformers phased to eachother. In this case, with the transformers phased, you can use a single ground buswire for all the tracks connected.Phasing is simple done with a lightbulb (20 volts) and 2 wires connected to it. Power up your transformers and connect the ground from the first with the ground from the second transformer with the lamp. If the bulb lights up, the plug of the transformer needs to be turned 180 degrees. Then do the same with the second and third transformer untill every transformer has it's ground on the same side. (in other words, connecting your bulb to any of the ground outlets on your transformers doesn't make it light up.)
i think you just answered my ?. all of my tracks are connected to each other via switches. so i guess i'm ok then.
thanks for the help.
With completely separate loops, you can indeed wire the commons of the loops together and use the same return wire to the transformers. In fact, if the transformers are out of phase with each other, this return then becomes a neutral, in which the return currents cancel each other, reducing or eliminating voltage drop in the return wire.
I don't understand your "phasing" instructions, Daan. I would connect the transformer commons together, then connect the lamp from a variable output of one transformer to a variable output of the other transformer, set to approximately the same voltage. If the lamp is bright, the transformers are out of phase; if dim, they are in phase.
Here is my usual warning against running trains between blocks powered from different transformer outputs--even if they are in phase, and especially if they are outputs from the same transformer.
Bob Nelson
1st a couple items i got from the hobby shop: fsu collegiate boxcar
cn sd40-2 lionel.
2nd pics of some wiring i did start from the drilled hole from the track to the barrier block, from the barrier block to the toggle switch, from the toggle switch out the drilled hole to the transformers.
3rd i have a question about this wiring.
i have two zw's with six 180 power bricks, connected to those wires i showed earlier. i have the tmcc command base hooked up to the "a" post on the first transformer. i have the red wire to line 1 and a post on first transformer, blue wire to line 2 and b post first trans former, green wire to line 3 and c post first transformer, yellow wire to line 4 and d post first transformer, brown wire to line 5 and a post to second transformer, orange wire to yard/roundhouse/ test track all on b post of second transformer, and i have the black wire common connected to all u post on both transformers together. if i'm right they should be phased right.
now i turn all of it on and all of the bricks are on, lit up, and neither of them are tripped. next i turn the lever's up to post a/b/c/d on transformer one, and post a/b to transformer two to give the track some power. next i hit each individual toggle switch to turn on power for all the lines. now line 1 and 4 bricks on transformer one and lines 1 and 2 bricks on transformer two dont trip, but line 2 and 3 bricks on transformer one trip. now when i turned it on only power went to the b post on transformer two. which is to the yard and roundhouse came on, also when i put the command control engine on it all the sounds worked but when i turn the big red button for it to move in either direction it would not move, but when i held down the boost button it moved in both directions and i hit the brakes button it stopped quickly, i could shut it down and start it up on this line, but there is no power to lines 1, 2 ,3, 4 of transformer one and lines 5 of transformer two. please help i'm lost if you dont understand please pm me and i will give you my number or you can give me your number. maybe by me telling you over the phone vs. typing it can give you a better understanding.
REGGIE,
The new ZW have tracks 1 and 4 to be run as conventional or at 18 volts. You have to do it manually with the Cab1. Press TR 1 and then turn your red button clockwise this will bring you power to your tracks. You can run conventional engines this way. Or you can bring TR 1 and TR4 up to full power and press ENG whatever and run them with TMCC. You can also have all of them running in TMCC by press the preset in the back of the ZW check your booklet that they gave you. Hope this helps.
laz57
Only just a small note to your connections. Isn't it wiser to solder your joints? I see that even the wires are screwed with crimp connectors to your toggle switches. Of course this works fine, and a lot of people do it this way, but I know from my work that these screwed connections loosen up sometimes, resulting in problems or power failures.
May be you could add some locktite in the screw holes to prevent the srews from loosening up. I use a solder iron and resincore solder to make connections, it is about equal timeconsuming, but the connection can't loosen up afterwards.
@lionelsony, the way I tried to explain is about the same as yours regarding the phasing of transformers. Based on low or high voltage difference while in or out of phase. I only don't connect the ground wires before checking and am probably a bit blurry describing how I'm doing it.. It works with my transformers however.
On old transformers, those without electronic voltage regulators, you can hear it by the humming sound of the transformer. If you are out of phase, those old transformers make a lot more noise. Not that that is the way to go, since measuring, even if it's only a light, is much securer in these sort of things.
WOWZER! Hey Reggie...you wasted no ones time here. You made friends, shared your layout and contributed. I only wish you the best in your travels, Sounds like you'll be in the states for a while so keep logging in. Also when you get over seas log on. Great thing about the web is it's world wide.
Safe journey my friend.
Trying to update my avatar since 2020
MartyE and Kodi the Husky Dog! ( 3/31/90-9/28/04 ) www.MartyE.com My O Gauge Web Page and Home of Kodiak Junction!
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