Wiring up the new track for the Xmas Social
Entry posted by craigwelsh
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Sorry for the lack of recent updated on this blog, its mostly been a case of more of the same as track and wiring have been replicated around the boards. The club has a xmas social however a fortnight on Saturday and so its all hands to the pumps as we race to get the new setup running in time!
The scenic trackwork for the two main running lines is now completed again and i've shown a quick overview of the main board.
Here is an overview of the underside of that board before most of the droppers are in showing the point motors have also to be done in the future. I've since labelled the boards on show but these were built and installed by Mike Bolton (of MERG as well as MMRS) who agreed at the Manchester show that Slattocks would be an ideal testbed for him to use the new MERG DCC system on. The modules are a USB interface on the upright, the MERG DCC/CBUS command station, a DC/DCC switchover module Mike built for the layout and lastly two 5A boosters which run two main districts (outer and inner tracks plus subsections) on the layout. Note all of the modules have quick connectors to allow replacement quickly if required. Either booster can power the whole layout too if we suffer a failure. The large capacitor under there was used previously for the electromagnets for AJs.
The main buses are 1.5mm lighting solid copper and terminated at the ends of each board in terminal blocks. The sub buses on each board then connect into the relevant main bus, in some cases via a circuit breaker in the future (e.g the goods yard). 25-way D's connect between boards with female connectors on each board and a separate standardised cable. The twin bus meant more pins required and we also have spares but the CBUS twisted pair and 12V power have yet to be hooked up.
Grey droppers are outer track outer rail, Yellow/red outer track inner rail, Black Inner track outer and Red/Black Inner track inner. Frogs are wired green and numbered though they have currently been soldered directly to the correct bus for straight roads until the motors are in. There was a minute of concern tonight when the booster was powered up and the trip went - i'd wired something with yellow/red when it should have been grey. Luckily it was quickly spotted and my Zimo chipped Hymek had a short first run on the layout.
The shots also show the robust plates now fitted to protect the woodwork from the bolts used to put the boards together. Slattocks gets disassembled quite a lot unfortunately to give more space in the main hall for popular talks and when Dewsbury Midland comes downstairs to attend shows.
This is Wednesday night's work, fitting the main and sub buses to the right hand end board and wiring up all those droppers from the two tracks.
The fiddle yard has temporary links utilising as much of the original pointwork as possible. Some of the pointwork at the left-hand end was very tight and now has a 48 inch radii on the outer and 42inch on the inner as the minimum. The right-hand end shows the original location of the junction on the board surface under the new links.
Tortoise point motors powered via CBUS accessory modules will be refitted after the through running only social. Some motors around the canal bridge will need some tricky cranks fitting to them as well to give us more of a challenge!
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