Roadbed for the Nebenbahn and some wiring gets done...

Hey all,

There has been more activity on Carstenbahn One thanks to rainy days and an attack of gout, which kept me indoors for much of the past two weeks.

I added some wood underneath the Koenigstein branch line, and have been able to run some trains up the hill.  The grade is quite manageable, and even a longer freight train can make it to the top with little difficulty.

I also started some of the wiring of the layout.  I learned about a 'bare copper' wiring technique from Tim Eckert of Eckert Engineering fame via a project he did for a client in California.  The idea is to run bare copper wires for all your power needs, then tap off those wherever you need juice.  Here are some photos of the design:

Sorry this image isn't sharp, but as you can see, there are three copper wires passing through eyelets and making their way around the layout.

In the image above you can see one end of the wires.  I used eyelets at the end, wrapped the wires around themselves, and ran some solder onto the twisted wires to hold them together.  FYI you don't want to make a loop on your power circuit.  Not sure why, but that's what I've been told...

Here's the other end of the wiring system near the control panel.  There are adjustable eyelets on this end to allow me to set and maintain decent tension.  Note the tabs of yellow, brown and red electrical tape.  These tabs, which are placed every few feet, remind me which wires carry which type of power.  Yellow is accessory power, red is digital track power, and brown is ground.  In the image above you can also see the dabs of solder that hold the wires together where they are twisted.