Hi Dave.

That trackwork looks very tidy and well made. The wirring looks pretty amazing too, does it all work?

Missy

Hi Dave.

 

That trackwork looks very tidy and well made. The wirring looks pretty amazing too, does it all work?

 

Missy

Thanks for the kind comments.

The pointwork was done by Tony Wilkins and, as you say, is rather well made - I've only attached droppers, wired up and added the cosmetic chairs.

As to whether the wiring works - only time will tell! I've checked continuity and isolation with a meter, but till the control panel is made, true function can't really be checked. During checking, I did find a couple of wiring errors, despite trying to be very methodical and careful. In one case, I'd wired a dropper to the wrong bus-bar. The other problem, I think, was caused by a short circuit between one of the crossings and the stock rails creating a false circuit, leading me to connecting the wrong tag. This caused some very strange connection issues between various sections of rail and the point change-over switch. Fortunately, once I'd cleared the short, it wasn't too difficult to resolve the wiring issues and all now appears to be correct.

Cheers,

Dave.

Glad to see some progress is able to be made though I fully understand why it is slow. Your wiring frightens me to death, but then your opinion of mine in 2009 probably couldn't be printed on here.

The track is looking good too. As your free time is at a premium Dave, have you considered easing things quite a lot by converting back to '00' gauge before your stock position gets too large. We pull each others leg about this and P4 so I hope other P4 modellers on here understand this.

Also glad to see the Bullied thingy has returned daann saaath where it should remain! Its appearance in the West Riding must have worried Delphites, not to mention the local ganger, who were only used to seeing the contents of Lees Shed.

Cheers,

LG

Nice to hear and see that progress with Delph is being made Dave.

I trust that some progress is being made elswhere to?

Keep up the good work and keep smiling

Dave at Honley

Is the blue the DCC bus with everything else being control of accessories?

Looking at the picture are your droppers basically screws as I can't see any separate wires?

By using digital commands for all accessories on Slattocks we vastly reduced the amount of wires needed through connectors as all the signals, controllers, points and probably the magnets (need to look at relays) work via a twisted pair for signal and another pair of wires for power.

Larry,<BR>For someone who thinks nothing of chopping coaches about and adding new sides, interiors and details, so only the door hinges and bump stops remain from the doner vehicle, and all in a matter of hours, I'm amazed you find my wiring daunting! There's no more than 50 wires along the boards (the actual number being somewhere between 37 and 50 - too many for a single 37 pin plug but some spare pins on 2 x 25's). As i said, this is partly because the control panel is at the opposite end of the layout to the main track feeds, points and all the signals.<BR><BR>Change to "OO" to save a bit of time? No chance!!!!<BR><BR><BR>Dave,<BR>Nice to hear from you. I've commited to your idea of a truly common return (except the AJ uncouplers). Hope it works when I switch on! I'll ring you on the other progress matter.<BR><BR>Craig,<BR>The layout is wired for both DC and DCC, sellected by rotary switchs on the panel - the only difference being which controller is plugged in and, in DCC mode, switch on all the CAB control sections.<BR><BR>The droppers are bare copper wire, soldered to the back (non-visible) side of the rails. Below the boards, there is an array of heavier duty bare copper wire bus-bars which more-or-less mimic the track layout above. These bus-wires are securred to the brass screws you mention. The droppers and track power feeds are connected to the bus-wires where they intersect, some being local to the screws, others along the wires.<BR><BR>The connecting wires are not fully colour coded, as such, as I didn't have enought different colours for every individual service/duty, but I have tried to keep the main duties to a fixed code:- blue is track power feeds, red for point motor feeds, white for signal actuator feeds, brown for AJ uncouplers and black is common return.<BR>There are plug-in points for both DC and DCC controllers in the facia of the next board along, so there are connections back to the panel for these. There's also a 16v AC supply, a 12v DC supply and the fiddle yard ready and bell-code wires running the full length of the layout - so it all adds up to quite a lot of wires!<BR><BR>Regards,<BR><BR>Dave.