The first wiring panel

A few sore muscles and scrapes later, the first wiring panel is installed, under Ridgway. I spent a good portion of this weekend planning and working on wiring, mostly trying to figure out how to organize things. I finally decided on 6 sub-busses, Ridgway, Durango, Ophir loop, Telluride, Dolores and Rico. Wiring for all those areas will terminate at panels in those 6 locations. All 6 panels will initially be powered from power supplies under Rico, but I could add booster supplies for any of the 6 panels at some later date.

Even though I'm using an older form of command-control, I'm still dividing each area into blocks, and wiring each block individually from the area's panel. This way, if I want to add detection or control-panel signalling later, it (should) be easier. I've decided to protect groups of blocks with 1156 automotive lamps, as several have suggested, so the panels and blocks let me lay that wiring out as well.

The panels themselves are sheets of plywood hanging under the benchwork, but hinged so that when I'm not working on wiring they can fold up under the layout. I really need the storage area under the layout, and this will keep the area under the panels more open, so I can get at stuff stored there w/o having to reach around behind the panels.

No work at all during October (busy month), but yesterday I got a bit more done and reached a major milestone - the first locomotive operated over a section of track! Here's one of my kids w/ the first train



It was just on the short section of track running between Dolores, thru the laundry room, and into the bathroom. Because that wiring had to be done as the track / bridge was created, it's wiring is done and I was able to hook up a power pack and test-run a locomotive.


My kids were so thrilled they immediately put a Lego guy or two atop the locomotive and shuttled him back and forth between the laundry room and bathroom for nearly an hour! The immediate focus for now is to start building the sub-bus networks of wiring, and tying in the rest of the existing trackwork...