All --
I thought you might be interested in a progress report on installing wireless
DCC on my layout. Roger Nulton has been helping me with the wiring. (The
“wireless” feature pertains only to the throttles. Everything else has to be
wired.) First we needed 12-gauge twisted pairs of bus wires. These we created
from ordinary BX cable, stripping off the insulation, removing the bare ground
wire, and using an electric drill to chuck and twist the wires around each
other. We strung about 150 feet of this stuff beneath the track base. Then
came the job of essentially replacing all the layout wiring. The only wires
that I could keep were those that powered turnout frogs from switch-machine
contacts. I couldn’t even save the leads from the stock rails to the
switch-machine contacts. These all had to be re-routed directly from the bus –
as did many more track feeders (approximately every six feet to every rail).
Oddly, once we finished rewiring the double-track main, a staging yard, and the
through passenger station, there was much less of a rat’s nest of wire beneath
my tracks. Roger lent me one of his decoder-equipped locos to facilitate
testing the new wiring, which helped greatly.
Now we are in the midst of rewiring the main terminal area. Once this is done,
we’ll tackle the branch line and its staging yard. This line will have a dpdt
switch that allows conventional DC power in order to be able to test newly
built or acquired locomotives before installing their decoders. We also need
to install the wireless repeater for better wireless coverage.
All of this comes with a heavy price tag -- about $1500 plus decoders for each
loco. But I have finally had it with forgetting how to run my own railroad
after being away from it for as little as three days. Now I can run a train
anywhere without regard for where the juice is coming from.
Dick Karnes
Mercer Island, WA (near Seattle)
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