REALLY Basic Wiring Question

[rsauerbrun]

Does someone have a picture of how the barrier terminal strip should look when wiring the track feeder wires? I have four pair of feeder wires coming in from two power districts, and one pair going out to my power supply. I have an eight position terminal strip ... on which side does what go? All my wires are color coded, with red from the positive rail and black from the negative rail.

Help for this newbie will be greatly appreciated ...  ;D

[John]

DC or DCC?

[rsauerbrun]

I am using DC for now, with a hope to upgrade to DCC in the future.

[John]

Ok .. then what you want to do is this ..

alternate red black in the block on the track side .. on the power pack side, simply run red and black from each block to the power pack ..

or .. you could run the red and black from the power pack to one block each, then jumper from there to the other blocks ..

any of that make sense?

[rsauerbrun]

Almost ... here is what I have now ...

Track Side     R  B  R  B  R  B  R  B
Power Side    R  B  X  X  X  X  X  X

and on the power side I have a jumper connecting all eight posts.

Is that what you meant?

[John]

yea .. exactly .. just make sure the jumper from the B goes to the B .. R to R ..

[John]

That way, when you go DCC, if you hook up more than one booster, you just do it on the power supply side .. you should be all set .

[rsauerbrun]

It works ... thanks for the lesson.   

[rsauerbrun]

Here is how it ended up, so there is room for expansion (up to 3 DCC boosters on the power side) ...

Track side    R  R  R  R  B  B  B  B
Power side   R  X  X  X  B  X  X  X

With the left four (R) terminals jumpered, and the right four (B) jumpered

[John]

Just to make sure .. you should never hook two boosters together on the same power district .. make sure there is a gap .. otherwise you blow them up ..

[amato1969]

This site is invaluable for model RR wiring practices:

http://www.wiringfordcc.com