What can I say rmathos? John covered it all! We do both, buy or make as suits our mood or need at the time. (I think John is still trying to hire an HO engineer to run his engines though. My guy works for room and board!)
I just finished the shell work on my first C-Liner kitbash- i made a cab-at-each-end unit [i loved the look of the old "Little Joes"] that is app. 61' long [i figure 1"=6' in HO for rough estimates like this] as opposed to the original app. 43'. This looks good to me and give plenty of extra space inside for flywheels and more weight. I'm going to complete this one to see how it runs. If the flywheels, weight, and wipers on all wheels along with a lube job and bur check give a favorable enough improvement, i will lengthen a number of them. Fun stuff! You know John, one of the nice things about electrical work is that there is just the + and -, and if i use color coded wire , i never mess up. Curt
Watash, and Curt, My engineer is as the same for yours Watash, works for room and board and a engine supply to choose from! And as always decent, and reliable preformance. He's a happy camper. Anyway not all wiring is +/- though... If you use powered turnout motors it can get comfusing with the cheaper ones with 3 wires (solenoid). One positive, one negative and one neutral. And on my layout I have 2 and 3 way wiring on lights for control and signals so.. It does get into electronic design alittle. Fustraiting but fun! I enjoy it. Keeps my brain in good pratice. And I'll go as far as "try things" on my own layout. To see if it works if so it stays if not.. it'll get restored to what it was, and never talked about! HA HA HA In wiring the layout itself I use Telephone wire with 4 conductor. Cheap, reliable and works great for low voltage. And is self contained not a bunch of wire dangling everywhere in under your board to clutter it all up! Easy to access if needed for maintenance. With juction boxes in places, for a place to put the ends of alot of different wires for different things and such. I try to keep it clean for the pain staking of maintenance of it so its easier... And as Watash has said we do both. buy parts and save money at times to make our own parts. I however do that quite offen! I made most of the addon wipers for my loco's and for my caboose (or is that spelled Cabeese?) for interior lighting as well as my passenger cars! [ 13 November 2001: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]</p>
Interesting John-i've been using telephone wire for over 20 years with no problems. I've been told by several people that it's not heavy enough if i run a couple locomotives at the same time- will melt and short out. I explain how long i used it without any problems, but they just look at me like i don't understand-love them experts. Never had to buy any of it either-always found a place it was getting torn out of or it was given to me by a friendly Ma Bell repairman. Now that i'm wireing for DCC and need heavy duty wire, i stumbled across a building a friend works in that had a bank moving out on the first floor. In their big computer room was a skillion feet of heavy gague wire criscrossing the floor in all directions in conduits-i asked around and got permission to take all i wanted for free-it was going to be ripped out and tossed in dumpters the next week! Now i have a skillion feet of both stranded and solid core wire in the gauge that is used in house wall wiring. Man do i love to scrounge! Curt
Curt, I have yet to buy telephone wire! I use it on everything with low voltages. Experts huh? HA! I run 6 loco's at a time sometimes for hours on end and I never yet had a problem of it melting or shorting out! Gotta love the experts. Watah ole buddy where ya at? Hear this? HA! I been using it along time too not 20 years but probably 6 to 8 and I never had to replace any of it that I installed. Only a few places where I moved stuff and had to add a length onto the existing wire but never replaced any yet. I have a friend that works for AT&T and is a repairman and when they upgraded their lines around here I told him not to pitch the old away I'd take it and well. I got reels of it now or well did have anyway! most of it is in my layout now. I might have 100 or 200 feet left at the very least! But I had him put up a note in their office for the repairman meet to bring it to him or I and had him put my home address up! I think I get about a reel of old telphone wire every 6 months or so... And it doesn't take long to use it up! Also, thinking of wireing. Save all your 1.5 volt Christmas lights that are file 13 material. DO NOT throw them away. You can cut the sockets out of a set of 100 and rewire them like a normal 12 volt light and wire 4 in a series for the 12 volts and have interior lighting for your layout. I got tons and tons of old Chritmas light sets under my layout in Garabage bags! I wire them as needed and every Christmas buy bulbs and they work. Cheap, inexpensive, and reliable to use. I wire them to work 2 and 3 different ways on the layout by switches on my control panel. so I can turn out lights in one place and not certain ones in another and vice versa... And the Christmas lights do the trick! And don't blow as fast as some would from the muliple controls! [ 13 November 2001: Message edited by: 7600EM_1 ]</p>
