People have discussed wire taps here numberous times but this is the first any mention of the positaps. What would you use if your bus was 14 AWG wire and what drop gauge would match up to it?
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
rrebell500 for $282 american
OK, that sounds better. I figured they must be available in bulk.
Where were you last September when I started asking about suggestions for the club's new layout?
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
You can feed up to 5 drops into one P.osi
500 for $282 american
rrebellalways used Posi-taps
Hi rrebell:
I believe these are what you are referring to:
https://www.posi-products.com/posiplug.html
Never heard of them before. Thanks for the suggestion.
Most of the bus connections have been done or redone as needed so it is a bit late to use the Posi-taps, but I will keep them in mind.
Edit: I just priced the Posi-Tap 12 - 18 ga size and they run about $1.39 USD each. Based on 600' of track with two feeders (+ & -) every three feet, plus two feeders for each of the 75 turnouts, that works out to just under 450 taps x 1.39 = $625.50 X 1.3 for the conversion to Canadian dollars = $918.86 incl. tax. Even if we were to put two feeders into the same tap along the double track sections we would still be in excess of $800.00 Had we known about the Posi-taps I doubt that we would have spent the money, but thanks again.
You can get a 100' roll of 14-2 indoor wire for $30 and 250 feet for $45 at Home Depot, which works quite well for bus wire. In light of the high cost of those taps, the bus wire isn't all that expensive if you had to replace it all. The taps are nice but still pretty pricey.
I'm guessing the guys who were nearly severing the bus wire weren't doing it right.
I'll ear mark the posh taps though for future reference.
riogrande5761 The Positaps look nice, but yeah, pricey.
The Positaps look nice, but yeah, pricey.
Now for some advise, not on ideas or work but suitcase connerctors. Mever used them because of the problems you mention, always used Posi-taps. Cost more but can be bought in bulk and can be reused as many times as you need or resold if you close up shop. Also easy to change or redo and no wires are damaged. Only extra requirement is the buss needs to be stranded and it is better if the feeders are solid. each unit can take up to 5 feeders so no termanal strips needed unless you want to do something fancy.
hon30critterA bunch of things will have to be done over. The mainline bus was nearly totally severed in a couple of places where the crew had attempted to strip it so they could attach feeders. Many of the feeder joints to the bus are badly soldered because the insulation was not opened up far enough so it got melted in with the solder joint. About 20 of the feeders will have to be removed and resoldered to the track because the existing joints are huge and messy.
I imagine it is things like the above that cause some clubs to over-react and not let most people do certain things; they've been traumtised by having to re-do many time consuming chores to remediate poor or bad quality work. What is the old saying: if you want something done right, do it yourself. Sometimes thats quite true.
hon30critterAbout 20 of the feeders will have to be removed and resoldered to the track because the existing joints are huge and messy.
Mike
Have a "training day" where you teach people a particular skill off the layout, like soldering bus and feeder wires.
Are you using the good sort of strip tools like the Klein or Stripmaster to do middle of the wire stripping? That takes some doing to sever the main wire using one of those. If it's #12 bus wire, that's like the biggest hole on the version of the tool I have, there's no real abiguity there. I know they come with different dies so that may not be the case with the one you have. The non-obvious part is the smaller size for the feeders, it's not the smallest hole, it's somewhere in the middle, and picking the wrong one can severe the wire. But those automatic type strippers can work for that, since it's end of wire stripping. The kind that grab from the end.
Ir doesn;t have to be just you or the president running these sessions, unless you two are the only ones with a particular skill. Delegate. Someone who's good at a particualr thing can be the foreman and teach others. Admittedly this didn;t work out well in my case - when I moved a long time ago I donated a section of my shelf layout to the club I belonged to so they could use it as a preview sort of thing to attract people to the main layout locatioon, on only one condition - that I get to help add scenery to it so I could learn. Like most of my layouts, it had roadbed and track and was wired and working, but no scenery besides painting the base an earth brown color. Well, next time I came back, someone had added all sorts of scenery and it was essentially done.
And a lot of this makes me realize I am probably too uptight to have many work oon my layout - I did on the last one, one guy was a local modeller who I was helping out with the wiring on his layout, his second large layout. The other was a friend who had no modelling experience but wanted to help out. I kind of feel bad I gave him the thankless job of putting the brown paint on all the pink foam, but he was happy to hang out and help one day a week. My modelling friend was good at all the intricate stuff - kind of has to be since he scratchbuilds small steamers in N scale - and he was a whiz at putting the servos in under the layout and getting them through the throwbar first try. Perhaps my eyes were trying to tell me something back then already. Not looking forward to that moving ahead, as solering my board over the weekend made me realize just how bad my depth perception is now. Still didn't burn myself on the soldering iron despite working inches from my face though. Usually it was, why isn't the solder melting - oh, it's not touching the same pad I have the iron on.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The President of the club spent a couple of hours on the weekend closely inspecting the work that has been done on the feeders and bus wires. Unfortunately he found several problems. A bunch of things will have to be done over. The mainline bus was nearly totally severed in a couple of places where the crew had attempted to strip it so they could attach feeders. Many of the feeder joints to the bus are badly soldered because the insulation was not opened up far enough so it got melted in with the solder joint. About 20 of the feeders will have to be removed and resoldered to the track because the existing joints are huge and messy.
I guess as the construction foreman I have to watch every connection as it is being made, or we follow Henk's suggestion which is to let the members do their best and then go in on a non meeting day to fix all the damage. We can't tell half the club that they are not allowed to work on the layout.
OK rrebell, my bad for over reacting. I apologise.
hon30critter rrebell Much better job of managing. Thanks, I guess. Actually, I feel that your comments are rather condescending. You make it sound like you think I am a rank amateur at leading people. I am not. Pardon me for sharing the fact that I wasn't on the top of my game the whole time. Enough said, Dave
rrebell Much better job of managing.
Thanks, I guess. Actually, I feel that your comments are rather condescending. You make it sound like you think I am a rank amateur at leading people. I am not. Pardon me for sharing the fact that I wasn't on the top of my game the whole time.
Enough said,
rrebellMuch better job of managing.
Seems that quote is generally attributed to the brilliant Esther Dyson.
Whoever said it first, it's great advice for sure.
ROBERT PETRICKI'm probably misquoting cuyama here, but his advice is along the lines of make only new mistakes. Robert
Good advice!
rrinkerHopefully you (or someone) is taking plenty of photos to document the progress. So that in the future you cna print some of those out and have them there for visitors to see: once it looked like this (empty room). Then like this (benchwork). Then we laid a lot of track (pics of bare track). Today, it looks like this (maybe one teaser photo of what they are about to see when they step inside) --Randy
Hi Randy:
We have a designated club photographer. I haven't looked at the website recently to see what he has posted but he has been documenting each stage.
hon30critter We had a good meeting tonight about how to avoid future mistakes.
We had a good meeting tonight about how to avoid future mistakes.
I'm probably misquoting cuyama here, but his advice is along the lines of make only new mistakes.
Robert
LINK to SNSR Blog
Much better job of managing. I see you employed the saving face ploy on those two with errant feeder wires, your tongue must hurt from bitting it when tou did that LOL.
Hopefully you (or someone) is taking plenty of photos to document the progress. So that in the future you cna print some of those out and have them there for visitors to see: once it looked like this (empty room). Then like this (benchwork). Then we laid a lot of track (pics of bare track). Today, it looks like this (maybe one teaser photo of what they are about to see when they step inside)
Thank you Dave for keeping us all posted!
WOW!!!
As of right now this thread has 500 posts and more than 35000 views!!! (Of course, most of those posts are probably mine)
Who would have imagined that there would be that much interest? Thank you everyone for your contributions and for taking the time to follow the thread!!
The cork problem in the curved section of the main yard turned out to not be a problem. Our chief track layer who installed the individual cork strips in the curved part of the yard politely explained to us that what he had done was quite prototypical. Brian knows a whole bunch more about rail yards than anyone else in the club because he has spent many years of his career working in them as a CN employee. He told us that there would normally be drainage ditches between curved tracks in a yard because there wasn't much foot traffic there. Switching was rarely done on a curve because things couldn't be seen properly. He suggested that the ditches which look huge right now without ballast could be partially filled with ballast to make them look less extreme. Problem solved.
The next problem was that Brian's assistant (who is also named Brian) had misinterpreted some instructions so he cut off some of the yard tracks where they shouldn't have been cut. Unless we had been staring over Brian #2's shoulder at the very time he clipped the rails the problem could not have been prevented. Brian #1 had given instructions. Brian #2 thought he was following the instructions. It was absolutely not a big deal. We removed the cut off sections of track and replaced them with full lengths of flex track. Problem solved.
The third problem involved the installation of the wrong colour feeders on one of the reverse loops, and then having those feeders attached to the wrong bus wires because of their colour. This is where managing people got really challenging. Two of us tried to explain the errors to the two guys who made them but we just couldn't get them to understand. It was like talking to a pair of brick walls! I won't go into the details of the discussion. Finally, I just told them that somebody else must have made the mistakes and let it go, but I was able to convince them to check with me frequently in the future.
Overall, the evening was quite productive. Most of those in attendance were working on one thing or another. We also ran a DC locomotive all the way around the mainline several times without any hiccups. That despite the fact that about 1/3rd of the feeders were not yet hooked up. Note that we did not permit the locomotive to make a full lap. We deliberately blocked the track so that it couldn't. The first full loop will happen during the Golden Spike ceremony which will take place within the next two or three weeks.
We made another decision about the Golden Spike ceremony. We decided to only invite a few fellow model railroaders from outside the club instead of bringing in the press and the public. Our reasoning was that non model railroaders wouldn't likely grasp the amount of work that has been done to date. All they would see is a bunch of framework and some bare track. They wouldn't be seeing a 'real' model railroad. We will hold a public ceremony when the layout looks like a layout. That may be a ways into the future.
Cheers!!
The old Dewalts had a raised plastic ridge on the battery and the case had a grove if I remember right, but the case was flexable enough that you could do it.
I'm looking at my 2 different DeWalt drills trying to figure out how I could possibly attach the battery backeards. The old 18V NiCad one, the shape prevents it from going in backwards. It would appear to take some doing on the newer 20V li-ion one to get the battery to slide on backwards far enough to make contact.
But you know what they say, make something foolproof and the world invents a bigger fool.
Since I work in a high tech business, I tend to think if I explain to people what needs to happen and no one questions it or says they need some additional clarification, they can run with it without constant handholding. Usually that works out, but sometimes it can come back to bite me because people are too timid or don;t want to appear 'dumb' by asking questions. Pretty sure I could never be a manager, because I HAVE had cases where I've laid out exactly what sould be done, only for the person doing the work to do something completely different and yes, it drives me insane. Especially when I have to then make the best of it because there isn;t sufficient time available in the project to redo all the other person's work. At least this is a hobby and hey, if we have to waste a week and redo something, well, so be it. No one says we're limited to X hours, or it has to be done by a certain date.
Not bad on you neccisarily, just you expect to much from people who are proubly not in the trades, I mean it can be amazing to me sometimes how things that seem so obvious are not even thought of. Example I have a good freind and I got my hobby room vaccum from him as he thought it was broken (he had never replaced the bag or cleaned the filters). Did you know it used to be possible to put a dewalt battery into a cordless drill backwords, talk about a proublem, luckily I was there as we only got to the smoke stage and this was an employee working on a job at big box HD.
rrebellGuess I came down a little hard on you, sorry but the solution stands.
Yes, you did come down a little hard. I edited my response to reflect that. We are doing our best to try to figure out how to get high quality work out of a bunch of guys, many of whom are not experienced model railroaders. Bad on me for not getting things absolutely perfect the first time.
Dave Warnica
hon30critter rrebell Sorry to say that you are part of the problem in not being able to overcome simple mistakes, that is your job as leader. You are absolutely correct! I have apologised to the members for not doing my job as well as I should have. I will try to do a better job. That's all I can offer. Dave
rrebell Sorry to say that you are part of the problem in not being able to overcome simple mistakes, that is your job as leader.
You are absolutely correct! I have apologised to the members for not doing my job as well as I should have. I will try to do a better job. That's all I can offer.