06-18-2010, 09:11 AM
Stein, thanks for the compliments! 
biL, First, I very much appreciate your interest and enthusiasm. There are lots of those pipe crossings down here in Houston too. I'll be doing some for sure now that your enthusiasm has infected me. I'll try to get some pictures too - looking forward to seeing what you can find.
For the wiring, I went big. This is because of the excessive lengths. The corners of the room are about 50 feet from the control panel (this includes the "up and over" in the attic).
Electromagnet bus = #12 black, red, blue, brown
Taps from bus to each magnet location = #18 four conductor cable
Track bus = #8 green, white (I used short pieces of #12 to reduce the #8 to a size which would fit in the terminal blocks in the CP.)
Drops from track = #18 two conductor cable
The #8 may seem overkill, but some of the runs are 50 feet plus. On my old layout which used #12 bus, the extreme ends wouldn't pass the "quarter test". Increasing the wire size to #8 did the trick. I decided to do the new layout bus with #8 because of that. #10 most liekly would have worked just as well.
As for turnout wiring, I am using homemade manual controls as in the thread:
<!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2691">viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2691</a><!-- l -->
The 3-way electrical switches are fed from the track bus with #18, then that feeds the frog with #22.
biL, First, I very much appreciate your interest and enthusiasm. There are lots of those pipe crossings down here in Houston too. I'll be doing some for sure now that your enthusiasm has infected me. I'll try to get some pictures too - looking forward to seeing what you can find.
For the wiring, I went big. This is because of the excessive lengths. The corners of the room are about 50 feet from the control panel (this includes the "up and over" in the attic).
Electromagnet bus = #12 black, red, blue, brown
Taps from bus to each magnet location = #18 four conductor cable
Track bus = #8 green, white (I used short pieces of #12 to reduce the #8 to a size which would fit in the terminal blocks in the CP.)
Drops from track = #18 two conductor cable
The #8 may seem overkill, but some of the runs are 50 feet plus. On my old layout which used #12 bus, the extreme ends wouldn't pass the "quarter test". Increasing the wire size to #8 did the trick. I decided to do the new layout bus with #8 because of that. #10 most liekly would have worked just as well.
As for turnout wiring, I am using homemade manual controls as in the thread:
<!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2691">viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2691</a><!-- l -->
The 3-way electrical switches are fed from the track bus with #18, then that feeds the frog with #22.
Three Foot Rule In Effect At All Times