I have written quite a lot about the trial and tribulations of building my control panel. But I think I have finally arrived at a version that both looks good and seems to work as it should. It ended being built in three sections. The bottom green panel is for a fiddle yard that I have not yet started making as I am waiting to see what clever options arrive for setting routes via the cobalt alpha system. I know something is on the way. but not yet whether it is something I can work out how to use. Being as Winnie the Pooh put it ‘a bear of very little brain’, this is not certain.
Being very logical I started Using DCC accessory codes 0001 at one end of the layout and then numbered each point or crossover as I reached it with the next number. The first build of the control panel had a had all the circuit boards mounted to the bottom of the control panel or on supports fitted to the bottom. This coupled with the numbering of the points geographically resulted in a lot of wires crossing between circuit boards. I have already written about the need to avoid constant reconnecting the wires and the switches as this gave me problems with loose connections. And made it hard to get at the thing to do maintenance as all the wires had one end fixed to the front panel, and the other attached to a circuit board in the case.

I then had a Harry Beck moment. (google it if you do not recognise the reference) The numbers allocated to the points do not have to be logical. They should just be connected to the nearest available socket on the circuit-boards. I had a rethink and ended up mounting the alpha encoder control unit to one side of a strip of plywood and the two corresponding digital switch panels to the other with short loops of three core ribbon cable connecting then around one edge of the plywood. This Strip is then mounted by supports to the back for each of the control panels two front sections with all the points on each section connected the nearest switch like this:

This means that each section of the panel can be removed as a self-contained unit. This greatly reduces the amount of strain put on the fragile connections. I have mounted a Power socket on the section closest to the back panel. So there are three cables that go out of the control box, a12volt power cable and the RJ11 signal cable from the first alpha encoder, and a cable to a remote display of called accessory codes. Between the two-sections there are just two cables (the power and the extension signal cable for connection two encoders) these are both made as plug and socket connections. So that to remove a section of the panel for maintenance requires unplugging just two connections.

Having reassembled the whole thing like this I was quite nervous about connecting it all up to what is built so far of the layout. But I did so yesterday and lo and behold, points started changing. Not the right point of course as I need to reassign the codes to the new non-geographical number order. But even so I am really very pleased with the results.

The next thing to tackle of the electrical stuff is to build a back panel for the control panel where the necessary sockets are put in place to make it even simpler to unplug the whole control panel. I also plan to build a similar box to hold all the power supplies and control units for Chard Junction so that I end up with a power box sits between the layout and the control panel. The back panel of this box will have power connecter sockets, two 4 pin XLR sockets to the layout, and 3 (maybe 4 sockets) to the control panel: the RJ11, the 12volt power and one or two display repeaters. It seems to be that the display repeater socket on an Alpha encoder only shows address operations for the encoder that it is connected to even though you can daisy chain several encoders. Either that or I have problems with the second decoder I have not discovered yet!
The power box will have sloping front like the control on this front will be inputs for my NCC handset(s), and. and a visual display show the accessory decoders operations and an amp-meter showing power consumption. If I get carried away It will also have temperature-controlled fans and a display showing temperature inside the box.