Appalachian Southern

This week I have been working on installing the tortoise switch machines and installing the drops from the track to the DCC bus lines. Each rail  gets its own feeder to the DCC bus lines. The isolated frog of each switch also gets one drop so the tortoise can control the polarity to the turnout frog. This will allow the motive power to crawl slowly through the turnouts.  All is going well so far.

Tomorrow I will start mounting the two Digitrax DS64 units that will be required to add DCC control to these six turnouts.  At that point I can also add my 12v DC power runs to each DS64 and wire up the Tortoise switch machines.  I use DIN rail mounted terminal blocks with jumper bus bars to tie the rail drops into the bus lines.   Here are couple of pictures of the progress so far.

Wiring Drops to the DCC Bus Lines

In the following picture you can see the wiring drops from each turnout’s isolated frog.

Six Tortoise Switch Machines Installed

Yesterday I made a significant miscalculation. I did not leave enough separation between the lower and upper level. So the task of the morning was to raise the upper level to a more reasonable height. Now the upper level is just below eye level for my height of  6′ 3″.

The process of moving the upper level upward was easy enough, just remove ~500 screws and replace them after moving each piece.  The process was not as bad as it sounds. These are the measurements I settled on after the move:

Lower Level Height : 47″

Upper Level Height: 68-1/2″

Distance Between Levels: 17-1/2″

These dimensions aren’t correct for everyone, but due to my height I had to raise the upper level just a bit to get the desired effect of eye level viewing. I hope it all works out as I am not moving it again.

I have the plywood under-layment just sitting in place.  I don’t think I will fasten it down until I get all the holes drilled for the DCC bus lines and get the fluorescent bulbs, ballasts, and wiring in place.  I thought I was going to lay some track this week, but I may just focus on getting the lower level lighting completed. As the track plans for both levels are nearing completion, things are going to get busy here really soon. I just have to remind myself that this is a marathon and not a sprint.

Upper Level Bench Work

Today I have reached the end of placing molds on this mountain. Right now I realize that I have an awful lot of blending to do. But, maybe a fresh set of eyes in the morning will be more optimistic.  Enough for today.

I think on the very top of the mountain, I am going to smooth plaster out over the area and use this area for tree planting and undergrowth. I hope it turns out ok. I have worked very hard on this.

If you are reading this, I would great appreciate your comments. Thank you in advance.

I have good news to report this morning. The wiring in the yard is complete and all the tortoises and DS64 stationary decoders are functional. Even though it seemed the wiring would never end, it concluded this morning. It makes me very happy to be able to move on to something else now.  I was like a kid running the CSX GP38-2 this morning. I even got a little adventurous and pulled MTLX 1048 through the turnouts. I was thrilled to find no problems with the track work!  I haven’t soldered my rail joints yet, but that can happen any time now.

I have attached some photos of the completed wiring and the first locomotive and the MTLX unit.  Overall, I think my background painting is going to work out well. I didn’t have to edit the photo at all.

CSX 2733 GP38-2 & MTLX 1048

Finished Wiring Switches 9, 10, 11

Finished Wiring Switches 5,6,7,8

Last night I wired my first Digitrax DS64 / Tortoise combination. Nothing really spectacular about it, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind.

Digitrax DS64 / Tortoise Wiring

The first thing you need to do is test the operation once you have it all hooked up.  When testing, you need to see if you got lucky with the polarity on the frog and you need to see if the switch is moving the right way when compared with the command you are giving on the DCC system. Just make sure the thrown command gives a thrown condition and closed gives a closed condition. Use a volt meter to test the two conditions on the switch itself. Measure between the frog and the appropriate rail to make sure you see your DCC track voltage on the selected route. If you see zero on the meter, you have the wires on pins 2 and 3 of the tortoise reversed. Simple enough to reverse them. I had to do the same.

A DS64 should be powered with the AX power inputs and a 12V DC supply, but this is just a temporary setup with rail A and B power.  Nothing wrong with this setup, but with multiple DS64s running on rail power, you will reduce the operating capacity of your layout.

I was happy to get the first one working without too much difficulty. I was also able to get my UR91 module installed last night and operate the switch wirlessly from the DCC throttle. That was cool.

All this isn’t as fun as running trains, but all neccesary steps to a functional DCC layout. All the good fun will come soon.  Here are a couple more pictures of the night’s accomplishments.

One Turnout Controller Wired and Functional

UR91 Radio Receiver Installed

I don’t want to come across as a “how-to” writer. I am just sharing with you guys the discovery process I went through when figuring all of this stuff out. I am not proclaiming to be a DCC expert.  See you all tomorrow for the Friday post.

Today I spent most of the afternoon wiring up tortconn connectors for the tortoise switch machines. I used some old CAT3 cable to provide all eight contacts to the Digitrax DS64 stationary decoders. Here is how the tortconn connectors look once they are soldered.

Here are a couple of pics of the connectors installed on the 11 tortoise switch machines in the yard I have been working on. It seems like forever now…

After soldering all the connectors I cleaned up the work bench, and wiped off my working surfaces. It seems over-spray from the airbrush was everywhere. I really need to get a ducted spray booth. I had no idea how much the over-spray traveled around the room.  Anyway, here is a final shot of the three bridges I have been working on. They only need one more touch up  with the airbrush and they will be complete.

n scale

I subscribe to two internet based mailing lists on the web:

1. N_Scale Model Railroading
2. Digitrax DCC

Appropriate links have been provided for both, just click for more information.  I specifically don’t use Yahoo Groups to read these lists, but rather subscribe directly to them via email. I just don’t like being a member of anything requiring a yahoo user name and password. To get around this you can subscribe directly and get all the posts to the list delivered via email. Much better than logging into the yahooz site multiple times everyday.  Normally if you find a yahooz group that you would like to join, its home page will have a section similar to the following at the bottom of the page:

Now you can just use the subcription email address shown for the group to subscribe directly and escape the yahooz control of your life.  Now, I use gmail exclusively; I setup rules within gmail to automatically label messages from these groups appropriately and then archive them directly to their own folders. When I am ready to read the days posts, I simply navigate to the appropriate folder and read away. Responding when neccesary.