Building the Pinnacle Creek Mining & Timber Co. RR


Ed, Great question. As for a photo? Nope! I just looked through 3000+ photos and I guess I never took a photo showing 'how to'. :eek: Electrics is not my favorite part of this hobby. This current layout I'm featuring has a town and it is completely lighted. I will show or draw the plan for that. As for layout wiring nothing complicated. I use #14 wires for the pos and neg buses. Feeders are generally #18 in Z and N and #16 for HO and O. These sizes might be overkill but better safe than sorry. Feeders are generally every 8 feet. I've done testing and any closer is, in my book, a waste of time and money. Modern day motors like 5 pole and better don't exhibit slowing down because of voltage loss. Some folks have nothing better to do than add them to each piece of flex track. To them I say, "Get a girl friend or be nicer to your wife!" Jim:)
 
Wiring is a huge headache that I have no idea how to tackle. Track doesn't seem bad, but buildings/accessories and switches seem daunting. Individual buildings I'm fine with, but wiring it all together, not-so-much. I'd appreciate some insight into that world.
 
Layout #5 Part 3

Some interest in town lighting so here's a thought or two.

First I laid out the track for the town area. Nice roundhouse coming.

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I decided early on that I would light this village.

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Love making the roundhouse.

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No photos of the under the layout wiring so I hope this drawing makes sense. The brown is a riser under the town. There is a switch that runs to a wall wort plug. Plus and Negative. These wires run to two separate bare wires, one will be positive one neg. Building lights are dropped down through the layout and soldered to each wire. Flick the toggle and you have lights. The two wires run in a loop beneath the town area it this really is easy.

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Of course the old fashion way is to have coated wire underneath and shave off a spot for soldering. At my age and condition this was not feasible thus this 'other' way to wire.

Hope this made some sense. Jim:)

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I understand what you're saying about the wiring. I take it that it's all-or-nothing on a single switch?

For the DCC'ers, I guess this is where stationary decoders come into play?
 
I understand what you're saying about the wiring. I take it that it's all-or-nothing on a single switch?

For the DCC'ers, I guess this is where stationary decoders come into play?

Most use a separate DC power supply for auxiliary items. If you decide to use LED's to light structures etc, resistors are used on one of the LED leads to reduce voltage to them.
 
Toot, is correct here. Some of those really smart fellows can hook it all up with DCC. NOT ME. The lights you see are DC and simple 'grain of wheat' bulbs. Since this is a private layout and the lights aren't on 12 hours a day this is a simple fix. Somewhere in this thread is a modern battery operated system that a like. Made in Japan. Good stuff.

On another note. If bare wires bother anyone you can always coat them after soldering with brush on rubber. Easier that trying to cut/strip wire on your back. I never had a problem with the bare wires nor did my cats. Jim:)
 
Thanks Sherrel.


I knew if a searched long enough I could find the bare wire set up for the town lighting. You can see the red and black wires attaching to the metal wires with simple soldering. Also there is the standoff device that is screwed into the wood to keep wires from touching. Jim;)

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Layout # 5

Last p
art.

TREES. Yep, this layout was a big deal at the time and the fact that I made over 3000 trees was part of it. I wanted to really build something that I had never seen before, basically a layout of great scope and the only way I figured to do this was build it and make it look like the forests of Oregon and Washington. The town was nice all lighted up, but where I come from towns are here and there but trees are everywhere! So I'll finish this layout up with mostly trees.

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Hi my name is cliff, drop over and see me sometime.

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More trees.

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Fun stuff. Jim;)
 



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