South Staging Back Tracks Installed.

 

Well the South Staging (Lower Staging) is starting to take shape with the Back 5 dead-end staging are in, but this staging is set up so that train back into the tracks ready to go again.

All the tracks in staging are already set up for track detection using a Gap Master which you can see in the photos they make it very easy to have the gaps.

Here the details for the Gap Masters i hope it help anyone that wants the information.

With the 5 tracks wired separately as well as the string of Points, this photo just shows the wiring for that section of the yard. I have not connected to the Yard feed yet in this Photo.

Servos installs, the things you learn.

As I have been using Servos with the Tam Valley Boards to control them, I have notice that I should have been doing the install a little different. I was installing them without a tube through the plywood deck so that the weather effected the ability of the servo by restricting the movement of the wire through the plywood. so more rework to be done again.

 In this Photo you can see the wire that is attached to the throw Bar of the Point, as you follow the wire back you can see the tube coming through the adjacent sleeper.

 in this photo you can just see the tube coming through the plywood above the servo having the tube may be a bit more work but a lot better operationally.

 Aside view of the servo the plywood and track bed and track

another view of the top on a different point. I will have to redo about 47 points oh fun. but in the long run it will be a better running layout.

 

Sorting Out Electrical Faults.
I have been having a few electrical problems with the layout and have done some modification to the way i had the layout wired.
Some of the rework is to update how i am doing my wiring.
1.had all dropper (wires from track to the main bus wire) the same colours (Red and Black) and started changing this only after a few months of starting the layout but never when back to do the rework.
Now.
 Main line droppers   :Red and Black.
Yard droppers           :White and Blue.
Servos droppers        :Yellow and Orange.
 All the Yard and Servo droppers go to plug to make it easier to drop out sections to find a fault.

With the wiring I have also made up some connection boards to make it easier as well as using boot lace crimps on the ends of the cables to to stop damage to the wires.

 The Boot Lace Crimps. I use different size crimps (note the colours are different) as can be seen going in to the plug in the photo above as well.

this is one of the Connection Boards I had made up, This one is for the servo feed cables. Since the cables do a loop it is so that both ends are connected to a single cable to the Boosters.

 

This is the Mainline Feeds the cables for the Main do the same as the Servo feed they loop but i have both upper level feeds going to the same booster.
The Main Line is split in to 4 sections 2 upper deck 2 lower deck. the Yard feeds do the same thing.