How I wire up a Model Railroad for DCC

[@kents.2866]

When using a spade bit, go through, stop your drill, and feel for the tip on the other side. Then use the small hole on the opposite side to put the tip of the spade bit into. Leaves you with a cleaner hole without blowing out the wood, especially soft pine.

[@iannarita9816]

My railroad is still a few months away. I will watch yours come alive with great interest.

[@PetesPrettyGoodTrains]

The bigger take away is to use the same color wire for left or right rail across your whole layout, and consider adding some kind of documentation on the underside of the layout saying which color is right rail which one is left. (Adds item to my layout's to do list) Jimmy, look into a keep alive for your engine there. I added one to a sound loco on my layout that stuttered like mad. Now I can pick the engine up and put it on a shelf before the sound cuts out!

[@mereprince4980]

So essentially just a capacitor?

[@PetesPrettyGoodTrains]

@@mereprince4980 yup, pretty much. you can buy them prewired from the decoder manufacturers, or probably source some on your own.

[@johnhermanson5249]

Good job. I've been using DCC since 1997 and repairing cameras sine 1977. I suggest you should heat the joint (at the rail joiners) and touch solder to joint (*not relying on already hot solder to run from the tip into the joint). Work quickly or ties will melt. Tortoise machines are good because they have built in switch contacts that allow you to power the frogs (as long as switch is "dcc ready" or frog has been cut).

[@jhoodfysh]

Well done with a very practical example Jimmy, gratz.

[@What_If_We_Tried]

Really appreciate this tutorial series, and your great idea about not installing track feeder wires directly opposite each other.

[@4everdc302]

Thinking about doing a switch layout. I'm paying attention 📝 🤔🚂🇨🇦🇺🇲🙋

[@andrewlaverghetta715]

Have you ever considered soldering the wires to the underside of the rails? I saw Charlie Bishop at Chadwick (on KZbin) so that for OO (which I think is basically HO. I tried it with my N scale layout and it’s worked really well. Obviously you can’t lay the track FIRST and then solder, you need to solder, and THEN secure the track. The wire that I ordered actually ended up being strands instead of solid, so I think this really helped with that issue as well. I just tinned both the bottom of the rail (after using an xacto knife to cut out the tie plastic) and the wire, then pressed them together with my soldering iron.

[@garyforestier1118]

I've thought the same for my set. Great idea

[@matthewhancock2127]

You could have soldered the lead wire to the bottom of the rail joiners to better conceal the wire leads, there is a video about doing just that, check it out.

[@garyforestier1118]

They sell them online too

[@MRR_Shadowolf]

Great video with great tips/techniques, thanks for sharing!

[@rwissbaum9849]

You can avoid having to mark your holes simply by feeding the feeder wires from above the layout. From above, it is obvious which color wire goes where. Also, I would not choose red and black for DCC power: these colors are almost universally used for positive and negative DC power. (Perhaps this is why Kato uses blue and white.) Next, I put two 90 degree bends at the end of my feeders - these change the wire direction from (1) vertical to horizontal pointing toward the rail and (2) horizontal perpendicular to the rail to horizontal parallel to the rail. The first bend is only about 1/8" long; the second is about 3/8" long to give a good soldering surface. This allows the feeder wire to nestle easily into the web of the rail. I also strip enough insulation off the feeder so the insulation does not show above the roadbed. Finally, if you do not have the luxury of turning your layout on end, the easiest solution is to run your DCC bus along the front edge of your layout, and make sure your feeders will all reach to the front edge (with a little slack). Then use IDCs - Insulation Displacement Connectors - sized for your bus and feeder wires. If your feeders are 22 gauge and your bus wires are, say, 18 gauge, you can use the red Scotchlock connectors - no need to crawl underneath the layout!

[@SD45-ET44AC]

Great suggestions! A question for you … if you put a wye or turnout in to be able to access a yard from either side of the layout, where your polarity would change at some point, how do you address this? 🎃

[@rwissbaum9849]

@@SD45-ET44AC I assume you're using DCC - the answers are different if you're using DC. The answer requires two parts. First, the easy part: if you are using insulated frog turnouts (and it looks like Jimmy is - you can see the black plastic frogs - you don't have to worry because the frog is where the shorts occur. If you are using metal frogs, the frog needs to be isolated from all four connecting rails and powered separately. (Some turnouts with metal frogs are advertised as "DCC Ready" - these usually have small plastic insulators in the rails surrounding the frog.) You can feed the power using the auxiliary contacts on a Tortoise or Blue Point switch machine, or you can take the lazy way out and use a Frog Juicer. The Frog Juicer detects a short and automatically reverses the polarity in the frog before the DCC system "notices" the short. Now for the harder part: reversing loops: You need to isolate the loop where you can maximize the length of the isolated section. For a reversing loop, that means isolating all four rails at the frog end of the turnout. For a wye, you would isolate all four rails on any of the three turnouts which connect to the rest of your layout. Then you need a DCC auto reversing unit (many suppliers, including Tam Valley, who make Frog juicers). You connect DCC power to the auto reversing unit, then connect the autoreversing unit to the reversing loop. If you have a long reversing loop, you make a sub-bus from the auto reverser and connect the track feeders to that sub bus. The auto reverser will detect and switch polarity when needed.

[@scentgrasslakerailway]

I am very curious and interested... why do you prefer not to use red and black wires colours for DCc wiring? I do but I am always open to more ideas.

[@rwissbaum9849]

@@scentgrasslakerailway My layout has a LOT of DC power users - I try to incorporate lighting effects - LED, incandescent, and Arduino - into every structure I build. In order to supply DC power to all those users, I have a DC power bus which runs right alongside my DCC bus wires. Now here's where it gets confusing: when I chose my DCC bus colors, I chose red and white: the red bus powers the rear rail (i.e. farthest from the front of the layout) - R for red and R for rear. Then when I ran my DC bus, I chose green for positive and black for ground. No problems so far, because electricity doesn't care about wire color :) But now we come to feeders for all those DC power users: I use 1.25 mm JST connectors for all my DC power - they are compact, so the connector will fit through a 1/8" hole in my layout, and they are keyed, so you can't accidentally reverse positive and ground, which is important for LEDs. (This also let's me swap structures around conveniently: I know that I can plug any building into any DC power drop.) BUT, the JST connectors are pre-wired with red and black leads. Black obviously goes to my black DC bus, but I always have a little mental hitch when I connect the red lead from the JST to my green DC bus. Is it a big deal? No. Have I ever connected a DC lead to the DCC bus? No. I guess I'm just anal-retentive enough that it bothers me. In my defense, I will say that I have been amazed to see how the profusion of wiring under my layout has multiplied; and I believe choosing and sticking to a color coding scheme is critical to trouble-free wiring.

[@scentgrasslakerailway]

@@rwissbaum9849 thanks

[@franzbrunner499]

very organized way you do benchwork, wiring etc -videos are 10min, but how many hours did you invest so far?

[@traveltrektrains8365]

Drinking my Peet's medium Big Bang coffee, and absorbing your wisdom, cheers

[@TedToal_TedToal]

Do you clean the top of the track where you soldered it, to remove flux and excess solder?

[@andycrawford9870]

Probably I missed it, but you ran feeders to every rail. Then just connected every feeder to a terminal strip? Where did you wire the tortoise switch controls? Maybe that's next. I like the labelling of wiring - R or B. Really important for Kato Unitrack except when some is blue/white and others are red/black....not sure why Kato does that.

[@calpilot7]

Great video. Any way to show or describe your connections to the main strip. Terminal strip hook ups lost me. Power input / output flow. Thanks.

[@rocketfire6623]

If I use atles n scale track with do I need a turn out motor if the switch already comes with a powered turnout switch ( this is for dcc. ( ).

[@normandedgerly8445]

Jimmy, I need to ask a question that I can't find a consistent answer to. I'm just about to begin construction on the first module of what should end up being a 2'x45' switching layout based on the track between Topton and the Deka plant in Lyons PA. My DCC system is an NCE power cab. Even though there will rarely be more than two locomotives at a time, it seems to me that at the very least I'd need a small power booster. If so, any idea what the correct one would be? Thanks!

[@jimorlando5700]

Can you tell me what gauge wire you’re using for the buss?

[@anthonylee2382]

I'm having the exact same issue with my turnouts but I'm just running DC. Will the solution be the same? They have metal frogs btw.

[@kraigsickels3918]

You need to cut gaps on every side of your frog . It will short if you don’t . Then you need a frog juicer for your frog.

[@davidowens989]

Have you tried Cafe Bustello espresso, I use a French press, black two sugars. Gotta have my coffee.

[@kend3900]

Great vid

[@BriansModelTrains]

Sweet

[@jeromejeffers]

Thanks!

[@DIYDigitalRailroad]

Thank you!

[@robertschmidt6383]

Maybe you could answer a question for me. Why do people just run their wires all willy nilly from point A to point B? Looks like spaghetti tossed at the board and very unruly. Labeling work work too. I don't know. 🤔

[@kraigsickels3918]

Most people clean up their wiring later as a later project.

[@robertschmidt6383]

@@kraigsickels3918 I'm use to seeing machine cabinets and the such where wires are routed properly the first time. Silly me. 😊