Powering The Layout's
I thought it might be nice to tell everyone how we have powered our layout's. By now we all know there are unlimited ways to get the job done as well as a market place offering a multitude of power supplies, remote control's, digital command control's, battery setup's and the list goes on and on. In the past few years I have had one temporary layout in my wife's front yard rock garden, three layout's in our basement, a small circular layout for our Christmas tree and now, one fairly well sized layout in our backyard. Each of the layout's have been powered with regular old DC power supplies from various manufacturer's over the years and most of them are still here in good working condition. I think the best thing about plain power supplies is the fact that they are simple, cost effective and very easy to set up quickly.
Our
Christmas tree layout is still powered by a Bachmann power supply that came with one of my
Big Hauler sets. The layout is a few years old now but the Christmas of 1999 brought us
the addition of a dedicated X-Mas train, an Aristo-Craft 0-4-0 and tender sporting the
North Pole & Snow Flake paint job. We only run two or three cars with the engine so
the cheap power supply is perfect. We use a single pair of wires running from the supply
to the track. On the power supply end, we have standard blade terminals which give us a
good clean strong connection. At the other end, we have some small (about an inch long)
alligator clips from Radio Shack. The power supply is kept up out of the way until we are
ready to play trains. Then we just clip an alligator clip to each of the rail's on the
bottom of the track and we are off and running! It cleans up just as fast and has proven
to be well worth the investment for a couple of clips.
The outdoor layout is a little more advanced in design but when you get right down to it, it's still running from a DC power source. The only functional difference is the fact that we don't need to touch the power supply and we don't need to be tied down to any one point to run the trains. What am I talking about? Yep, the Aristo-Craft Train Engineer with the matching Ultima power supply. I know some people are a little fuzzy when it comes to the T.E. system so let's see if I can help out a little here.
The Train Engineer or T.E. is a set of it's own. The Ultima power supply is also an item all by itself. When you go to purchase the entire system you need to buy two different part numbers. ART-5470 is the T.E. system and ART-5460 is the Ultima power supply. The T.E. comes with two main components in the box. The transmitter which is the fun part you walk around with and the receiver. The receiver is the second component that sits some place out of the way where nobody generally sees it. The Ultima power supply is a single piece and comes in a box by itself. The two items are designed to be used together but some people don't need a 10 amp power supply so Aristo has produced these units so you can by one and not the other and still be able to make use of the cool functions. For example, if it came right down to it, you could hook the T.E. up to a cheap Bachmann power supply and make it all work. I'm going to leave the nitty gritty details out because I don't want to swamp you with too much. My intention here is to just give you an overview of how our layouts are powered but I will help anyone out with the details if they would like...
Now,
the method we used to set up our layout is pretty basic. We have the Ultima power supply
sitting on a small dedicated shelf in our basement with a GFCI protected AC outlet right
next to it (the GFCI outlet is dedicated to the layout and also supplies power to the
water features). The shelf is mounted up high on the back wall, close to the joists which
make up the floor of the house. There I have a small hole drilled through the joist area
in the back of the house allowing for the power supply wire's to exit the house. The hole
was sealed up with silicone caulk after the wires were run. If you look at the picture to
the left, you can see the DC output wires (red and black) running up the wall between the
joist's where they exit the house.
On the backside of the house (outside) I have a cheap garage type plastic utility
cabinet mounted off the ground. My wife found ours on clearance at Meijer's for a few
bucks. The hole in the back of the house that allows the power supply wire's to exit goes
right into the backside of the cabinet (they are the red and black wires shown in the
picture below). In the cabinet, on the highest shelf is the T.E.'s receiver component.
This is where the power supply wires from the house hook up. You may also note the thin
black antenna wire for the receiver in the picture. The higher off the ground you can get
this wire, the better. Most people who experience distance problems with their T.E.'s have
antenna wires that are balled up or too close to the ground. Minimizing interference like
this makes a big difference.
From there, another set of (black) wires runs from the T.E. receiver to the
lowest shelf where I have a simple wire terminal block screwed down. Note that at this
point I have an AGC type fuse holder in place. The block is my power distribution point
for the layout's track power. From the block I have a number of wire's running in pairs to
various points of the layout to be "feeder's" so I don't have any areas on the
layout that may not be getting any voltage or enough current to keep the engines running.
The picture only shows one red and black pair but there are more now. A word about the
fuse. I use a fast blow fuse and have found it blown twice this past summer. Each time
I've found that my kids have shorted the rails with either toys or yard tools so a fuse
here is a must to have.
The feeder wires run out the bottom of the cabinet through a two inch piece of
PVC pipe that runs underground a few feet to the layout. From there the wires branch out
in every direction to each point on the layout where they do their job. In the picture you
can also see some gray wires too. They are multiple pair category 3 phone line. They are
used for different things on the layout such as controlling turnout motors and supplying
power for lighting in buildings. And yes, they are all labeled at each end. With over
1,200 feet of wire I need all the help I can get.
One of the key things to note about this setup is the fact that the power supply is
mounted in the house away from mother nature. The power supply runs from standard
"house" power which is 120 volts AC. That's more than enough to kill you so it's
best to keep it safe and sound in the house where it's protected. The output from the
power supply is pure DC power at about 21 volts which is much safer for us to be
"handling", although the supply will put out a whopping 10 amps that can still
hurt us pretty badly or in some extreme cases kill us. But still much safer for us to use
outdoors... Anyway, the receiver is mounted outside so the transmitter can talk to it with
as little interference as possible. It's kept pretty safe from the elements in the
lockable utility cabinet but it can also be brought into the house by undoing two screws
and one connector for safe keeping or long term storage...