Since we arent all electronic gurus and can be easily confused...why is it there isnt at least an NMRA rule/standard/recommendation/commandment when it comes to track rail nomenclatures? I mean...the NMRA is the Holy Grail of Model Railroading...right? Are they asleep at the wheel ? Shouldnt we all be doing it the same ? Even in terminology ??? Geeeeezzz!!! I have been 'studying' numerous websites for installing my DCC wiring. Forums, manufactures, emails, PM's, Facebook, Twitter, magazines, PDF's, DCC dedicated websites, hand signals, smoke signals and every other form of communication. When wiring feeders to the 2 individual rails from the Buss...I have read of each rail in a section of track being refered to as: A Rail / B Rail X Rail / Y Rail #1 Rail / #2 Rail Red Rail / Black Rail Outside Rail / Inside Rail + Rail / - Rail Right Rail / Left Rail Top Rail / Bottom Rail Furthest Rail / Closest Rail Abbott / Costello Amos / Andy Mork / Mindy And of course my all time favorite... "Just connect the wires to the "Track". ROFLMAO !!! It seems Modelers are the main culprits. Everyone wants their lingo to become the 'Common Denominator'. Kinda like the "Turnout" vs "Switch" debate. Or the "Unitrack is Bulletproof" fiasco...LOL. Waz up wit dat ???
I just pick a color for wires and try to keep one color to one each rail and try not to mess it up. and I call them turnouts becuse thats what my club calls them.
Hi George, While I do not feel you pain, I do understand where it is coming from. Yes it has been tragic that there is no standard nomenclature for track polarity. But then the NMRA leaves a lot to be desired, because they really don't know electricity or the fundamentals of a true Digital Command and Controls systems either. The best way to do this adopt what is comfortable for you. Since you are a Digitrax user, perhaps the best convention would be theirs, the Track A and Track B. There is no real +/- with DCC because it is an alternating current waveform, color convention can also be your friend. Actually there is no real +/- in DC either, it is actually V+ and GND. But that was a convention that seemed to be comfortable.For N track modules I run the feeders and the buses in the colors of the track. So red always goes to red, yellow to yellow etc... I do that so others can understand better how things are wired. In the end, it is your layout, and your rules. Pick the name and convention that suits you best and shake your head at the rest.:teeth:
Since DCC has no Positive or negative like DC, just pick which rail will be A and which you want to be B and do so over the whole layout. Could not have been simpler when I started. This was one of the easiest things about DCC.
Gee, I always thought it was simple. I think of my line as going east and west. It may not be "true" east and west but that is an old railroad convention. I prefer to lay out my layout in "map" directions, where the viewer's left is west and right is east. Of course it probably actually goes round and round... If the track runs east and west, then the two rails are north and south. My wiring convention- which I don't know of anybody else using- I think of north as cold, so the north rail gets the white wire and the south rail the other color I use for tracks- namely blue. I chose white and blue by default, since red, green and black are commonly used on turnout wiring. You may have an idea that works better. But I've got an idea to try to keep straight.
Took an old, crappy boxcar..........spray painted one side red, the other side black (color code for my feeders). Put it on the rails, and commenced to drop feeders of the correct color to my pre-installed "buss" wires, couldn't have been easier, and never got out of polarity.
Actually...this post was made more tongue and cheek then anything. I am going to be running DigitraX and they use Rail A and Rail B as the designations. But when ya read other DCC websites ya get all them other terms used and ya have to recompute what they mean in your brain. I'm to old to have to think to much anymore...ROFLMAO !! :wink:
Yeah. But... When you are dropping multiple feeders at a location it kind of helps the situation to have color-coded wires....(and that is true even for me, who is "color-challenged"). I am running Digitrax with a PM-42 power manager, configured for 3 blocks and an auto-reverse. These are color-coded on my layout as red-black, green-black, white-black and blue-blue/black striped. Guess why.
Okay, not so tongue in cheek, Maybe thge NMRA should publish a standard for the nickle content of nickle silver rail not to go below a certain percentage. Those manufacturers whose rail either meets or exceeds the percentage can claim they are NMRA compliant. Rail not meeting the spec must come with a statement that it is NOT NMRA compliant.
To avoid even further confusion: the metallic element Nickel is spelled n-i-c-k-e-l. A "nickle" is a coin worth 5 cents. It is a very common mistake - not trying to be a wise guy.
Actually you'd want to specify a maximum nickel content, or just pick a specific alloy to standardize upon.
What we got here a bunch of funny guys? Calls them "turnouts" because the club does. Yep, I followed the lemings over the cliff because they all said it was safe. I jumped off the bridge because others wanted to. And everyone is doing it. Yep, that's perfectly logical. Don't get me started. LOL Wiring? Electricity is pretty simple when it comes to model railroading. It's pretty basic in that one type of circuit is all you need and you repeat the process for every block you want on your layout. Repeat, repeat, pete, repete, geez why did I decide to having so many blocks? How else am I going to be able to run more then one train in Analog DC? There are wiring books you can buy that have hints, how to's, tutorials and graphics that show wiring schematics. For a while Radio Shack had charts that explained how certain capacitors, diodes and spark plugs work. Ok, maybe you won't need spark plugs but still it would be a good idea to know how they work in the 1X1 foot scale. I wired my layout to DPDT's, and that's not some harmful bi-product off some power pole transformer. This is so I can operate Analog DC, two trains, Cab A and Cab B. With the advent of DCC I added in a DPDT between my DCC power supply (to the track) and Cab B. I can shut down Cab B and operate all kinds of trains as long as every DPDT on the control panel, where trains are being routed and operated on DCC are set to Cab B. You won't believe the fun I have. No common wire or common rail and I don't recommend that. Caution: Until you have the self discipline to run your Analog DC and DCC responsibly...I'd recommend you shut either Analog DC completely off, while operating DCC. Not a good idea to run them at the same time. I already learned that lesson so you don't have to. But, then what the heck...go teach yourself. You will think your DCC locomotives had smoke generators installed. Not LOL. NMRA...aka holy grail. Hawhawhawhawhawheeheeheehawhawhawheehee. Now that's funny. All they are is a model railroad organization who are made up of guys and gals WHO CAN'T AGREE on anything. Heeheehee You are kidding, aren't you? Thanks for the laugh. It's been loads of fun reading this thread. Gosh....col. Wondering why you can't do this more often? LOL
Huh?!?!?.............didn't know there was a difference...........:question:..............but I think it would work equally well with ANY scale wired the same way as ours is for DCC.
