Is there a colour standard for accessory bus wiring?

[Dungrange]

I know that there is a convention that the track bus wires on a DCC layout are Red and Black, but is there a colour standard for the accessory bus, or for that matter any other track wiring such as droppers to frogs, which are switched through the point motors?

 

If there is a standard I'm happy to adopt it, if not, then I'll just make up my own, as long as I can differentiate between the two buses.

[St Enodoc]

4 minutes ago, Dungrange said:

I know that there is a convention that the track bus wires on a DCC layout are Red and Black, but is there a colour standard for the accessory bus, or for that matter any other track wiring such as droppers to frogs, which are switched through the point motors?

 

If there is a standard I'm happy to adopt it, if not, then I'll just make up my own, as long as I can differentiate between the two buses.

Don't know if there is a standard, but my frogs are green (of course...).

 

For the accessory bus I use a fairly heavy-duty speaker cable, which has clear insulation with a white trace on one conductor.

[Pete the Elaner]

1 hour ago, Dungrange said:

I know that there is a convention that the track bus wires on a DCC layout are Red and Black, but is there a colour standard for the accessory bus, or for that matter any other track wiring such as droppers to frogs, which are switched through the point motors?

 

It is your layout. Set your own standards & document them. If you ever have to trace a fault, documentation make this much easier.

I would disagree that track wires should be re & black. That sounds more like a limitation than a help.

 

When starting to wire a layout, I usually look to see how much wire I have of each colour then use what I have most of for what I think I will need most of.

 

Document what you use. I know I said that already but it helps when doing further work or troubleshooting.

[Sir TophamHatt]

2 hours ago, Dungrange said:

I know that there is a convention that the track bus wires on a DCC layout are Red and Black...

 

Mine are brown and blue.

Bus wires are those colours, so are the droppers.

 

But then I started getting messy and using any old bit of wire... black... red... green... but I always used the clip connecting it to the bus wires correctly so I can ID it slightly more difficultly than if I just used the correct colours, but easier than physically tracing the wires back.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Sir TophamHatt

[WIMorrison]

I think that red and black comes from the 'old' days when T&E was red and black for live and neutral, that is now orange and blue

 

as has been said, it's your trainset and you can play with it however you want to

[Phil S]

Differing manufacturers of ready-to-run point etc have established their own wiring colour standards - and if you are likely to use any of their components, you may wish to either consider using them, or avoiding them as you consider best. Either way, having a consistancy is best and less likely to introduce errors later !

eg Marklin/trix use blue and yellow for points, others red black green etc.....

Where flat ribbon cables may be used, or pre-made D-type leads bought for interboard wiring, for example, these are related to the resisitor colour code, possibly with extra 2nd colours as needed depending on how many there are..   if your 'devices' have 'fixed' numbers in the wiring, then it might be useful to follow the resistor colour code. Expand ROYGBIV to get...

0Black,1Brown,2Red,3Orange,4Yellow,5Green,6Blue,7Violet,8Grey and 9White   and Gold+Silver

For my 00 and H0 layouts - the basic dcc busses are brown (outer)  and blue (inner) - with the different coloured sleeves  grey, black, white, gold identifying which is which.  I also use White+White with Black stripe (loudspeaker) flex for low voltage ac and red+black for 12V dc used for lighting. 

In preparation for 'sectionalising'/feedback bus source identification, on our portable H0 layout - which needs 80 sections or detectors, coming back to 5 Digikeijs Modules (2 x 8 for each) I commisioned  reels of wire with custom colours - so that the 2nd colour stripe can match the number 1-8 /0-7 of the connector to be used, and the 1st colours for the '1/2 module' .  You might find the colour combinations of use to you by looking in the automotive wiring part of ebay, as I did.

 

For our garden and portable G Scale layouts - which use LGB heavy brass rail ... forming 1 bus in itself at about 0.5 ohm over 125m (8A max) - this has only the 1 section with all point motors powered off it (24 sets)... and about 4 power busses of heavy loudspeaker cable - originally red+ black, now red+clear ... used with no differentiation as they simply parallel connect the track as many times as possible - the garden requiremen being primarily to ensure adequate power capability.( Massoth rail clamps and/or copper greased fishplates)   Colours deliberately chosen to avoid any possible confusion with mains cabling  - which in the garden may be blue yellow Arctic, or orange sleeved. The portable can extend upto 17-20m, and relies only on the massoth rail joiners... all run on a single 3A dcc feed .. but only 1 or 2 trains running at once, and fairly level.

[melmerby]

12 hours ago, Dungrange said:

I know that there is a convention that the track bus wires on a DCC layout are Red and Black,

AFAIK there is no convention at all. Some manufacturers show other colours.

 

I have used red & black as I had a load of ex-house mains cable. (2.5mm & 1.5mm)

If it had been blue & brown I would have used that instead.

I have kept to a common scheme and also used red & black for the accessory bus

However I have used blue & brown for accessory decoders that require a 16v AC feed

 

 

 

[melmerby]

10 hours ago, WIMorrison said:

I think that red and black comes from the 'old' days when T&E was red and black for live and neutral, that is now orange and blue

 

as has been said, it's your trainset and you can play with it however you want to

Orange?

[newbryford]

11 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Orange?

 

Dirty orange is the new brown?

[St Enodoc]

17 hours ago, Pete the Elaner said:

 

It is your layout. Set your own standards & document them. If you ever have to trace a fault, documentation make this much easier.

I would disagree that track wires should be re & black. That sounds more like a limitation than a help.

 

When starting to wire a layout, I usually look to see how much wire I have of each colour then use what I have most of for what I think I will need most of.

 

Document what you use. I know I said that already but it helps when doing further work or troubleshooting.

Red and black is the convention because it corresponds to the colours of the "track" wires on loco decoders.

 

It is of course only a convention and not a rule or a standard. You can do whatever you like as Pete and others have said.

Edited February 26, 2019 by St Enodoc

[Vecchio]

I think it is also a question of personal taste and what wire colours you have available in larger quantities. So I use for instance on every module yellow and black for the DCC bus but I have also a DC supply going through all boards, using blue and red where red is the positive pole. DC is only for accessories, so a fixed voltage, not controllable.

[Junctionmad]

I only use red and black for their original intended connections , ie +- DCV.

 

On our layout we adopted 

 

violet, grey  , DCC bus and droppers 

Red,/Black 14vDC  accessory power

white ,pink CanBus 

green frog wires

 

we retained the normal colours for servos , etc 

 

I also try and avoid the mains colours like blue and brown , though this layout uses a dark blue  for certain functions 

 

 

dave

 

 

Edited February 27, 2019 by Junctionmad

[Vecchio]

19 minutes ago, Junctionmad said:

 

green frog wires

 

 

 

 

 

This is something many people are doing. Also I use green frog wires for obvious reasons...

[RedgateModels]

28 minutes ago, Vecchio said:

 

This is something many people are doing. Also I use green frog wires for obvious reasons...

 

yep ....

 

[WIMorrison]

How many colours of wire are there?

 

that will define how many standards there are

[lennie]

As already been said. It's your railway wire it to suit you. 

Just remember whatever 2 colour you use for wiring the track from the power bus dont use these 2 colours for anything else.

[Andymsa]

I don't use any Colour code as such for buss and accessories busses. But each buss is identifiable. One thing I do as I use digitrax bdl168 each input is colour coded. Also each point output from the accessory decoder is colour coded. And detailed records are kept. A track plan is also used to identify all track feeds.   

[Francis deWeck]

 

There are no set rules as others have discussed. However, the construction of your layout in respect of power supply is a consideration. My layout is divided into 2 power districts, which require separately identified cables and run from a command station and its booster. The first power district follows the traditional red for +ve and black for -ve feeds, the second power district has green and yellow cables. The layout is divided vertically for the transition from one district to the other. I also have a booster which supplies power for the accessory decoders and signals, this uses blue and white cables, and is in effect a third power district. Droppers are rather more randomly coloured, but usually are fed through the appropriately coloured cables to PDBs on the busses. I have yet to find any company that is interested in selling/making buss boards of any length, so there are more PDB’s perhaps than might be considered necessary. The PDB’s are neat little numbers from Brimal Components, who also supply neat connector boards, suitable for point control and more besides.

The layout is controlled by an NCE Power-Pro system, which has as protection for the Command Station and the Boosters  using individual EB1s, which feed out through RRampmeters and PSX boards for separation of the districts.

 

Polarity is also an issue, as I have triangles to deal with. This kit for this is Tam Valley dual and hex frog juicers:

www.tamvalleydepot.com/products/dccfrogjuicers.html

 

This arrangement has provided a degree of stability where operation is concerned, and has been arrived at through trial and error, not least the configuration of the power districts.

The end to all this is play time, although re-wiring has been extensive and somewhat time consuming.

 

I provide links to the dccspecialties site in respect of the RRampmeter and the PSX kit.

 

https://www.dccspecialties.com/products/rrampmeter.htm

https://www.dccspecialties.com/products/powershield_x.htm

 

This arrangement has provided a degree of stability where operation is concerned, and has been arrived at through trial and error, not least the configuration of the power districts.

 

The end to all this is play time, although re-wiring has been extensive and somewhat time consuming.

 

 

Edited March 1, 2019 by Francis deWeck
Time-out issues and text editing

[Art Dent]

On 27/02/2019 at 14:38, WIMorrison said:

How many colours of wire are there?

 

that will define how many standards there are

 

Actually, to be pedantic and mathematically correct, No.

 

For a pair of wires, two different colours - 2 ways, three colours - six ways, four colours - 12 ways (assuming that, for example red & black is different to black and red)

 

For n different colours there are n x (n-1) different combinations - e.g. for 3 wires, 3 x 2 = 6 ways.

 

If you don't mind the wires being the same colour then for n different colours there are n! different combinations - e.g. for 4 wires, 4 x 3 x 2 = 24 ways.

 

Only joking 

 

Art

Edited March 1, 2019 by Art Dent

[WIMorrison]

But for an infinite number of colours there are an infinite number of combinations.

 

Touché 

 

[Art Dent]

That's very true. Strange fact however - some infinities are larger than others!

 

To answer the OP's question, I bought a 25m reel of 1.5mm2 twin & earth so the bus colours will be blue and brown.

 

Personally I'd have preferred red & black but have none of that wiring left.

 

Since I have an oval I am planning to wire blue to inside of oval, brown to outside ('blue' is a shorter word than 'brown' and 'inside' is shorter then 'outside') - so easy to remember.

 

Art

Edited March 2, 2019 by Art Dent

[Philou]

Ah ..... like 'port' and 'starboard'. 'Red' and 'green' and 'left' and 'right'. Short words on one side, long words the other. Makes sense. I'm not sure it works in other languages tho' .

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

[Art Dent]

36 minutes ago, Philou said:

Ah ..... like 'port' and 'starboard'. 'Red' and 'green' and 'left' and 'right'. Short words on one side, long words the other. Makes sense. I'm not sure it works in other languages tho' .

 

Cheers,

 

Philip

 

Its a good job that I don't speak any other languages then 

[Junctionmad]

There are , despite the confusion , in this thread , several standards for low voltage colour codes exist, the most common being IEC60304, which superceded standard like EIA598 , or VDE and DIN 

 

iec60304 defines 12 single colours and 12 dual colours ie a primary colour with a “ tracer “ 

 

the single colours are 

 

Red

green 

blue

Yellow

White 

slate ( grey ) 

Brown

Violet 

aqua 

black 

orange

pink 

 

these colours are whats available typically for common wire sizes like 7/0.2 and 16/0.2, the dual colours are much harder to find 

 

this gives you the range from which you can select colour codes , but of course first verify you can source the colours from your cable supplier 

 

you have a choice to either use a restricted set of colours but document throughly , this is the typical practice in industrial wiring , often all wired in red and black , or to assign colours to functions 

 

I would suggest if you assign colours then stick with that , the tendency is after the initial install to use odd bits and therefore corrupt the colour coding you’ve adopted 

Edited March 3, 2019 by Junctionmad

[Phil S]

As model railway wiring is 'low voltage' - typically 5v-24V,  then it can be useful to look at 'automotive' parts ( and wiring ) suppliers.

As a result of being for a low voltage, a range using less-plastic in the sleeving is available and, it seems, increasingly common in cars.

This saves weight - important for cost and fuel saving in moving vehicles BUT ALSO useful with portable model railway layouts ... reduction in carrying weight being a good consideration.   The current rating - based on heating effect/dissipation is also higher due to having less (heat) insulation  ... but for the model railway, it is the voltage drop through resistance that is the important consideration - for minimal drop / brown out at full current, and the ability for the 'short circuit current' to be high enough to trip the protective device.

Car suppliers offer a range of main and trace colours - but not all are  'off  the shelf' - some may need to be custom made at 100m minimums.