Following on from post #18, a bit of detail on the wiring of the track.
Whilst initial testing had been carried out using temporary wiring and wedging of the point blades with off cuts of sleeper material we then needed to get the points fully operational and the permanent wiring installed.
Tie bars from JLTRT have been employed, a simple two part etch glued together with a paper gasket between them to provide electrical isolation. I know some people dismiss the use of rigid tie bars soldered to the point blades but so far they have worked fine, hopefully the slow motion of the point motors should minimise the risk of failures. See photo below.
Under the baseboards now.
The points are operated by Tower Pro SG90 servos attached to mounts available as kits from MERG, as are the servo control boards. The mounts contain small SPST switches to change frog polarity. An additional switch can also be fitted to give visual indication of route setting on a control panel if required. See photos below.
For the power feeds to the track, droppers wires were fitted to each individual piece of rail (soldered to the bottom of the rail prior to fitting it). Note only one dropper wire is fitted to each length of rail, fitting numerous wires to each rail (for safety’s sake) just seems to cause additional work and shows an admission that your soldering isn’t up to scratch! Well that’s my opinion for what it’s worth! These dropper wires are then soldered to lengths of OO flexitrack glued to the underside of the baseboards which act as bus bars, to me much neater then wavy length of bare copper wire. A seven pin din plug provides connection to the power box (containing a Lenz 5amp transformer and LX100 base station. A Lenz LA150 panel provides connection for the hand throttles. See photo below.
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Inter board connections are via pluggable terminal strips, the male halves fastened to the boards and fly leads made up using the female halves. Saves the hassle of soldering wires to 25pin din plugs. See photos below.
