Really and truly- go slow. On a scale of 1 to 10 on electricity, my knowledge before doing a layout was at 1. Now it is 2. I am redoing the top level of my layout. I have to rewire. I forgot there was a common wire connection up there that needed to be hooked up. I had about two hours of frustration before it dawned on me. Go slow. It saves aggrevation.
Doing it all, then finding a problem, can be a big pain to chase down. I have found that doing a little, then testing, and repeating the process, saves headaches. Boxcab E50
I've learned the hard way. I wired the new road one wire at a time (after the first two). Even though it was meant for DCC, I still made mistakes, especially when the inner rail became the outer rail as the layout loops around the garage. My previous layout started simple, then got very complicated. It had about 30 blocks, with four mainline cabs, three local cabs, and a slew of reversing sections and team tracks. I was trying to employ all the tricks I'd read about for block wiring. I was so confident in my logic powers that I'd just hook up 20 or 30 wires to numerous 2p2t switches and--zzzzzzt! Troubleshooting usually involved ripping it all out and testing it wire by wire. Of course, a few times I'd gotten it right, only to have the short somewhere else Near the end, the wiring was such a rat's nest that I eventually ripped it out and rewired the whole thing. I still couldn't get the transfer sections (from main to local cabs) correct. And if I was away from that layout for more than a few days, I'd forget the entire scheme, which discouraged me from completing some of the more complicated sections. Even the second try ended up a rat's nest. I still get the shivers thinking about it.
Pete, I know the feeling. I had an old layout that had a roundhouse with 18 bays and I had each track wired seperately to a couple of selector switches. Like you I would leave it for a few days and have to remember what I had finished and needed to work on. I will definitely use a sketch or diagram my circuitry in the future. I work in Power Distribution and should have known to do that on my first layout but as others have stated I thought my powers of Logic were superior and I would have no problems. Ha Ha to that. Suffice it to say that in the future I will always make a Schematic for reference and kepp it handy.
Agree on all that. The Belmont Shore Club has a wiring diagram completed by a member a few years ago. He was an EE and really did a good job. Put it on the computer and everything. Prior to that, we had to rely on the memory/experience of the more seasoned members. Sometimes it was a mess. One of the control panels had the most beautiful wiring harness I may have ever seen anywhere. Everything was bundled, laced, and routed in a right-angle manner so the board could be easily removed to work on it. But...all the wires in the panel were the identical color from the same spool of wire! It finally became impossible to trouble shoot anything on that panel. Fortunately, it was not a major location, so that is probably how it was made that way in the first place. You should be consistent in the procedures and document it all.
