Best Way to Apply DCC

[tim3766]

Hello to all 

I am building this layout 

Could somebody advise me on DCC Control 

The Unit i will be using is a  Gaugemaster DCC01 Prodigy Express Starter Package

Any help would be much appreciated   as i am a Newbie to Dcc  

Thanks 

[WIMorrison]

What is it you need to know - I don’t see any questions to answer 😞

[AndrueC]

Your controller should have two output wires. At a minimum you pick a section of track and attach one output to each rail. For a small and simple layout that should suffice but possible improvements:

 

* Your turnouts are probably power switching. That means whichever route is not selected loses power. That's not a problem for DCC but means that any locos parked in sidings will lose power so their lights will go out and sound will stop if the turnout is set against them. It isn't necessary for DCC so...

 

* On larger layouts it's not wise to trust fishplates to carry power. More complex layouts will have a separate 'bus' and each section of track and each turnout will be fed power from that bus.

[tim3766]

Hi Andrue  that is perfect thank you, i was worried about the points 

 

Tim 

[tim3766]

Are there little pins i can buy that i can clip into the points      that will keep the whole layout live   ?

or is that a bad idea 

[AndrueC]

What scale are you modelling in and what kind of turnouts are you using?

 

For N scale Peco 'insulfrog' turnouts are as I described and can be installed as-is out of the box with no special treatment. For Peco electrofrog you need to isolate the frog connection but otherwise installed and used as-is. Ideally for electrofrog you'd power the frogs separately.

[AndrueC]

2 minutes ago, tim3766 said:

Are there little pins i can buy that i can clip into the points      that will keep the whole layout live   ?

or is that a bad idea 

If you want the whole layout live just connect the siding rails to your controller outputs (following the same 'polarity' as you did the main power connection). Turnouts can be a little more complex as per my other reply.

 

But for your layout as shown here I think five pairs of connections should be enough but if in doubt add more. A lot of us make a point of connecting each section of track to the bus just to ensure electrical connectivity. For turnouts the fixed outer rails need power. The frog..as per my other post ;)

Edited April 13 by AndrueC

[tim3766]

ok Andrue   i think i will go with a Bus  system   that way less room for error 

thanks again for the help 

[AndrueC]

For what it's worth there are two ways to implement the bus.

 

The way I did it is to have two bus wires running under the layout. Then wires are soldered to the rails and dropped down (we call them droppers) and connected to the bus wires using Scotchlok connectors. The problem with this is that it's easy and can lead to haphazard wiring.

 

A better way is to use something like these or these. Here you have the bus wire connected to two of the terminals then the droppers connected to the remaining ones. So instead of a continuous run of bus wire you 'daisy chain' the terminals together. This encourages planning and more careful wiring. Both of these also allow you to make/unmake connections which could be good for fault finding.

 

Tidy well planned wiring is a must for exhibition layouts. For those that won't ever leave your own home..it's nice to have. I was able to wire my layout up quickly and can add new things with little thought. But if I ever need to trace where something is getting its power from that can be a real pain.

Edited April 13 by AndrueC