What is the best way to power the track that is in a roundhouse? Solder the wire to the track between the house and the turntable? Or drill holes in the roundhouse floor and put the leads inside the roundhouse?
Gene
Our club soldered the wires to the track and installed the roudhouse after. We drilled holes. The wires are soldered to the rails at the rear of the roundhouse, out of sight.
That was our "best" way.
Each track is controlled by a switch. The feed to all the switches is controlled by a DPDT switch for turntable reversal. Wired for DC and left as is for DCC. No big deal.
We might install a DCC reverser but the turntable is used rarely right now
(http://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l267/richg1998/img_0703.jpg)
Rich
do you use dc block wireing like me or dcc?
Daylight,
I use DCC, but it doesn't matter. The track needs to have power to it to allow a locomotive to enter or depart a stall. There is no way I know to power the stall track through the turntable.
Gene
I would think wiring a roundhouse for DCC would be easier than DC block in that you could just run a bus then multiple feeders soldered as necessary. Of course I'm the guy who has 16 sets of feeders on 72 feet of track...
Gene,
When I did mine, I soldered the feeders to the approach track between the roundhouse and the turntable. Its easier to repair a loose wire outside of the roundhouse than inside of it. Too much plastic that can be damaged. The feeders went to several Atlas 3 switch connectors so I could turn each track on and off individually. I have 12 tracks coming from the turntable and with a sound locomotive on each one it gets kind of noisy.
Tom
We have switches on the facia to allow a track to be turned off. The switches are about 12 inches from the roundhouse. We use #22 from the buss to each track as a loco by itself does not require much current.. Since most are DCC/sound, it could get quite loud.
Rich
I wired all the roundhouse tracks to their own bus. Later I wired the bus to operate through a push button. This means all the roundhouse tracks are dead unless I am holding the button down. I added the push button after one locomotive was somehow left running slowly inside the roundhouse.
As I figured, there is no best way, just different ways.
Rich
I already figured to power each track individually - because of steam sound. And will use the Atlas three switch "Connector."
I figured that maybe the best way would be to solder to the approach track, and not drill through the roundhouse floor - as pointed put - a lot of meltable plastic there. <g>
Gene
Quote from: Jim Banner on June 25, 2008, 01:51:33 PM
I wired all the roundhouse tracks to their own bus. Later I wired the bus to operate through a push button. This means all the roundhouse tracks are dead unless I am holding the button down. I added the push button after one locomotive was somehow left running slowly inside the roundhouse.
Did the same thing Jim except I use a push button for each roundhouse stall and garden track so that no loco is ever left under power in the roundhouse or on a garden track.