Even seasoned model railroaders can get a wire crossed under a layout. My advice is to decide on the colors for your buss. Then take a cheap freight car and put colored tape on each side. Lets say you choose Black and Red for your main track buss. Put a strip of black tape on one side of the car and a red strip on the other side. Decide which color goes to the back, black to back, for example. Then as you go, push that car around to each section you plan to wire. The color coded car will help you keep your wiring straight. It will also help you find that reverse loop.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. You confirmed what I was hoping to be the case and that the wiring would be mostly similar DC to DCC. My biggest concerns were through turnouts and such but the ones that I have I believe aren't current routing so I don't think i'll have to worry about locomotives shorting out when going through them. But there's really only one way to find out! lol. I'll get my least favorite DCC locomotive and run it around. It's mostly all powered. But I bought a bunch of power feed jointers and some insulator jointers just in case. Also GOOD memory on your roster. I don't think I could tell you the road #'s on more than 2-3 of my locomotives at the moment. lol.
If you locos don't have "Keep Alive" capacitors and you turnouts have insulated frogs then you may have your locos stopping on the turnout frogs. If you have solid metal frogs you will probably want to get a Frog Juicer on those. The Frog Juicer can switch the polarity of the frog in Nano seconds.
@@dkaustin98 I'm running N scale so unfortunately no keep-alives. Yeah that was my concern with DCC and the turnouts. They're old Atlas Code 80's with plastic frogs. I'd have it covered if I were using Kato Unitrack as they can route current and i'd have juicers on them. Wish you could fit a keep-alive in an N scale locomotive. That would cure the issues I have with the few in my fleet that have issues.
In regards to SAK's question I did exactly that on my N scale layout. I use Kato Unitrack and Atlas turnouts on my Atlantic Longhaul layout. You just remove the unijoiner and use regular rail joiners to connect the track. Also you will need to use cork roadbed under the Atlas track to keep it at the same level as the Unitrack. Hope this helps.
I used Atlas track connected on a girder bridge feature with regular track joiners replacing uni-joiners to my Unitrack at both ends. Solder carefully to avoid melting the Unitrack.
Jimmy, BY FAR the cheapest and easiest way to add sound is to use one of Adafruit's Sound FX boards. These boards accept almost all sound files (but NOT MP3 files: this is a proprietary file format and Adafruit keeps their price low by not paying the license fee.) At least one of their boards accepts a microSD card which holds sound files. You can use Audacity to mix, balance, and convert audio files to your heart's delight. If the Adafruit SoundFX board does not have an on-board amplifier, you'll need a separate amplifier - I go for mono, not stereo (to reduce the size of the sound files), and some come with a volume control that you can adjust with a screwdriver. Next you'll need some 2" round 4 Ohm speakers. I have one such system hooked up to my grade crossing flashers - whenever the flashers are activated, the Arduino triggers the sound file for a grade crossing bell, which loops until the flashers stop. Another system is installed underneath my stock pens, and plays random stock noises as long as the layout is powered - no Arduino necessary.
Jimmy, although I am not a patron (yet) i really enjoy your videos. I noted this morning the question concerning adding sound to arduino projects. I recently did this with your grade crossing sketch, adding a bell to the project. This turned out to be very simple as i used one of the "expensive $ 3.95" MP3 players. I used free sound effects from " Zapsplat" for the player, The site is worth checking out . . The only issue i had was power from the arduino. As the MP3 player has an included 2 watt amplifier, it draws more current than the arduino is happy with. lol simple fix was adding a spst relay to arduino output and a seperate power supply for the mp3 player. The player drives a cheap 1" speaker extremely well, but of course the volume is somewhat limited, I tried putting the speaker in a tube , and that helped a lot. Final resolution was designing a acoustic " horn" that will recieve the 1" speaker. This was printed on my resin printer and works great. If your are interested, i would be glad to send you the printer file and photos of completed unit. All in all I think the entire cost of the sound addition to the crossing project was less than $10 including resin costs. So pretty cheap. Keep making the videos , i look forward to seeing what you are up to each week, Final note: I love the bible verses you place at the end of you videos. I confirms what i already knew about you from watching the videos, Best Regards Glenn Sheppard 76 year old retiree
I'd love to see how you put together a DCC+EX, your computer, block detection, signals, some boosters, some point-ctrl, etc. There are many videos out there but mostly piece by piece and I am missing the integration videos, putting it all together. I am watching the IoTT channel as well and he does some magic stuff but the putting-it-all-together is still missing. BTW, I love drinking Lapsang Souching a very smoky tea. Coffee I drink only in the form of Irish Coffe et al. :-)
Thank you for answering my question! Always enjoy your videos! SAK is my initials put together. I get called "Sack" by my friends. I am planning on adding a staging yard to my small layout and was thinking of using Kato unitrack on modular sections and attach it to my Atlas code 83 on the rest of the layout. My thinking is when I move again (maybe in the next 5 years), I can more easily "break down" the staging yard and cart it away with my small train table. Thanks again for your tips and advice!
A nice interesting session Jimmy. Looking forward to the implementation of some of your arduino projects. Practical application is always better than benchwork.
As far as coffee goes I'm drinking a mixture of Maxwell House Intense Bold mixed with Goroka Coffee Highlands Blue from Papua New Guinea with Splenda sweetener. 😊 I'm finally going to build an N Scale railroad so I have been binge watching your very informative videos. Thank you for the great information. 👍😊
I can't believe you could rattle off all your engines and numbers. Man you are good. Being the cheapskate that I am, I have all my trains in an excel spreadsheet. Also in the vain of being a cheapo, I use open office not that I'm plugging that particular software but it what I use and linux. Just about all you can do on Windows you can do on linux. Back to the spreadsheet I record all the trains I have and what type of couplers and types, manufacture, and what they're worth. Total between engines and cars I'm in the 279 range. You know what they say the guy with the most trains wins.!!!!! The video was great and it's always where I want to be.. Always looking forward to seeing you Jimmy!
Block separation is used in DCC too, i mean in an exibition you need to be sure you dont send 2 trains knocking so you need to cut the power. unless you use fremo...then there are other rules but most exibitions wont have enough ppl for fremo, although i whish it would have! Also collor coding doesent work when you have a ton of wires. I would recoment noting each wire with a labeler and having made an electronic echematic before....you have no idea how many times that has saved me... I would say after you finished your railroadd plan the first thing is make an electronic schematic of it and note all your connections so you know which goes where...trains wont run on wifi....
I don't drink coffee do to stomach problems though my roommate is drinking Dungeons Dark by Rainshadow Coffee Co. while listening to this episode. I have been thinking of setting up a N scale layout about the size of my dinning room table to to being in an apartment. I want to model it around the 1920-1940 with mostly steam, pre diesel era. I grow up in eastern Washington State so my setting will be there with the five railroads of that era and region.
Aloha Jimmy I'm currently prototyping an Arduino nano with a DFPower Mini MP3 player to add sound to my DC layout T track. The DFPower uses a micro SD card to hold files and has a 1W single channel amplifier. My plan is to have a bunch of them (one per section) if sound is wanted. I will use a program like "audacity" to capture sounds from "railfanning" videos to gather various sounds. This started with sounds for a crossing gate. Drinking Costco Columbian w/2%milk and Truvia.
I have found that the glues we use is not holding. I have used Testers, Mastercraft, and the Plastic Weld but after 3 years the models start falling apart. I have used Super Glue but hate getting on my fingers than finger prints all over the place. Have used Super Glue with Baking Soda and it seems to work but it leaves a build up.
Great video and lots of info which helps a lot ,was wondering ,have limited space ,basic shelf using t trak modules ,saw the video you did on seanery on t trak module really great are you going to do another
Got a request here: I am getting into N scale and the thought of putting a Dcc sound decoder into my first loco (a DCC ready Kato ES44DC) is a little intimidating whereas there are several drop in DCC only decoders. I’ve ordered the parts for the DCC ++EX build and I wanted to know if there’s a good under layout sound option? (better than no sound) I’ve read a bit about JMRIs VSD but are there any other options? I understand the reason for sound in the train itself but with a small layout I can’t imagine that sound tracking would be a problem.
Not exactly what you're looking for but check out Paul McWorter's UA-cam channel. About 3 years ago +/- he did a series of nearly 75 tutorials on the Arduino, starting from absolute zero knowledge and it's really great.
I want to use a couple of 36 x 80 plain hollow core door slabs for the base of my railroad in an L configuration. If I do continuous run I will have to use 15 inch radius curves at the ends and perhaps on the inside curve at the joint between the leg and foot of the L. My locomotives are two Bachmann On30 2-6-0 Moguls. Will it be ok to have the tight curves in the areas mentioned? I believe the inside or back corner of the L can use 18 inch radius though.
Even seasoned model railroaders can get a wire crossed under a layout. My advice is to decide on the colors for your buss. Then take a cheap freight car and put colored tape on each side. Lets say you choose Black and Red for your main track buss. Put a strip of black tape on one side of the car and a red strip on the other side. Decide which color goes to the back, black to back, for example. Then as you go, push that car around to each section you plan to wire. The color coded car will help you keep your wiring straight. It will also help you find that reverse loop.
I do that and works great.
Also under layout I have stapled cards to remind me how to connected to buss from my unitrack drops.
Thanks for taking the time to answer my question. You confirmed what I was hoping to be the case and that the wiring would be mostly similar DC to DCC. My biggest concerns were through turnouts and such but the ones that I have I believe aren't current routing so I don't think i'll have to worry about locomotives shorting out when going through them. But there's really only one way to find out! lol. I'll get my least favorite DCC locomotive and run it around. It's mostly all powered. But I bought a bunch of power feed jointers and some insulator jointers just in case.
Also GOOD memory on your roster. I don't think I could tell you the road #'s on more than 2-3 of my locomotives at the moment. lol.
If you locos don't have "Keep Alive" capacitors and you turnouts have insulated frogs then you may have your locos stopping on the turnout frogs. If you have solid metal frogs you will probably want to get a Frog Juicer on those. The Frog Juicer can switch the polarity of the frog in Nano seconds.
@@dkaustin98 I'm running N scale so unfortunately no keep-alives. Yeah that was my concern with DCC and the turnouts. They're old Atlas Code 80's with plastic frogs. I'd have it covered if I were using Kato Unitrack as they can route current and i'd have juicers on them. Wish you could fit a keep-alive in an N scale locomotive. That would cure the issues I have with the few in my fleet that have issues.
SD-70-2, hey Jimmy I have a ES44AC from BLI it performed the way I sent it back to BLI and they fixed it. It now runs great.
In regards to SAK's question I did exactly that on my N scale layout. I use Kato Unitrack and Atlas turnouts on my Atlantic Longhaul layout. You just remove the unijoiner and use regular rail joiners to connect the track. Also you will need to use cork roadbed under the Atlas track to keep it at the same level as the Unitrack. Hope this helps.
I used Atlas track connected on a girder bridge feature with regular track joiners replacing uni-joiners to my Unitrack at both ends. Solder carefully to avoid melting the Unitrack.
Jimmy, BY FAR the cheapest and easiest way to add sound is to use one of Adafruit's Sound FX boards. These boards accept almost all sound files (but NOT MP3 files: this is a proprietary file format and Adafruit keeps their price low by not paying the license fee.) At least one of their boards accepts a microSD card which holds sound files. You can use Audacity to mix, balance, and convert audio files to your heart's delight. If the Adafruit SoundFX board does not have an on-board amplifier, you'll need a separate amplifier - I go for mono, not stereo (to reduce the size of the sound files), and some come with a volume control that you can adjust with a screwdriver. Next you'll need some 2" round 4 Ohm speakers.
I have one such system hooked up to my grade crossing flashers - whenever the flashers are activated, the Arduino triggers the sound file for a grade crossing bell, which loops until the flashers stop. Another system is installed underneath my stock pens, and plays random stock noises as long as the layout is powered - no Arduino necessary.
I guess I've started to look forward to these videos. I was actually looking for the new Coffee & Trains video yesterday!
Jimmy, although I am not a patron (yet) i really enjoy your videos.
I noted this morning the question concerning adding sound to arduino projects. I recently did this with your grade crossing sketch, adding a bell to the project. This turned out to be very simple as i used one of the "expensive $ 3.95" MP3 players. I used free sound effects from " Zapsplat" for the player, The site is worth checking out . . The only issue i had was power from the arduino. As the MP3 player has an included 2 watt amplifier, it draws more current than the arduino is happy with. lol
simple fix was adding a spst relay to arduino output and a seperate power supply for the mp3 player. The player drives a cheap 1" speaker extremely well, but of course the volume is somewhat limited, I tried putting the speaker in a tube , and that helped a lot. Final resolution was designing a acoustic " horn" that will recieve the 1" speaker. This was printed on my resin printer and works great. If your are interested, i would be glad to send you the printer file and photos of completed unit.
All in all I think the entire cost of the sound addition to the crossing project was less than $10 including resin costs. So pretty cheap.
Keep making the videos , i look forward to seeing what you are up to each week,
Final note: I love the bible verses you place at the end of you videos. I confirms what i already knew about you from watching the videos,
Best Regards
Glenn Sheppard
76 year old retiree
I'd love to see how you put together a DCC+EX, your computer, block detection, signals, some boosters, some point-ctrl, etc. There are many videos out there but mostly piece by piece and I am missing the integration videos, putting it all together. I am watching the IoTT channel as well and he does some magic stuff but the putting-it-all-together is still missing. BTW, I love drinking Lapsang Souching a very smoky tea. Coffee I drink only in the form of Irish Coffe et al. :-)
I am also watching the “Iott channel” . Good stuff happening there.
Thank you for answering my question! Always enjoy your videos! SAK is my initials put together. I get called "Sack" by my friends. I am planning on adding a staging yard to my small layout and was thinking of using Kato unitrack on modular sections and attach it to my Atlas code 83 on the rest of the layout. My thinking is when I move again (maybe in the next 5 years), I can more easily "break down" the staging yard and cart it away with my small train table. Thanks again for your tips and advice!
Another mention- thanks Jimmy.
Arduinos are another world to me so maybe some day in far future.
Hey Jimmy and another good product to hold track down if you can find it is shoe Goo I used it to hold my servos down when I was racing
A nice interesting session Jimmy. Looking forward to the implementation of some of your arduino projects. Practical application is always better than benchwork.
Jimmy, an FYI, "Fadeless" is a company that makes paper for school bulletin boards. Used it for decades. BTW, coffee here?? Lion Kona Coffee - Black!!
As far as coffee goes I'm drinking a mixture of Maxwell House Intense Bold mixed with Goroka Coffee Highlands Blue from Papua New Guinea with Splenda sweetener. 😊 I'm finally going to build an N Scale railroad so I have been binge watching your very informative videos. Thank you for the great information. 👍😊
I can't believe you could rattle off all your engines and numbers. Man you are good. Being the cheapskate that I am, I have all my trains in an excel spreadsheet. Also in the vain of being a cheapo, I use open office not that I'm plugging that particular software but it what I use and linux. Just about all you can do on Windows you can do on linux. Back to the spreadsheet I record all the trains I have and what type of couplers and types, manufacture, and what they're worth. Total between engines and cars I'm in the 279 range. You know what they say the guy with the most trains wins.!!!!!
The video was great and it's always where I want to be.. Always looking forward to seeing you Jimmy!
Kato makes transition pieces to connect Unitrack to regular code 83 track. It costs about $5...
Never seen them in HO scale.
Block separation is used in DCC too, i mean in an exibition you need to be sure you dont send 2 trains knocking so you need to cut the power. unless you use fremo...then there are other rules but most exibitions wont have enough ppl for fremo, although i whish it would have! Also collor coding doesent work when you have a ton of wires. I would recoment noting each wire with a labeler and having made an electronic echematic before....you have no idea how many times that has saved me...
I would say after you finished your railroadd plan the first thing is make an electronic schematic of it and note all your connections so you know which goes where...trains wont run on wifi....
Would love to see you re-visit DCC++ now that they've made a lot of changes and JMRI really adds great stuff.
Second this
@@Jason_DPMF I 3RD
I don't drink coffee do to stomach problems though my roommate is drinking Dungeons Dark by Rainshadow Coffee Co. while listening to this episode. I have been thinking of setting up a N scale layout about the size of my dinning room table to to being in an apartment. I want to model it around the 1920-1940 with mostly steam, pre diesel era. I grow up in eastern Washington State so my setting will be there with the five railroads of that era and region.
HI JIMMY been working on a computer Can't wait till DCC ++ Comes out with the 5.0 update DC & DCC I hear!!
Aloha Jimmy I'm currently prototyping an Arduino nano with a DFPower Mini MP3 player to add sound to my DC layout T track. The DFPower uses a micro SD card to hold files and has a 1W single channel amplifier. My plan is to have a bunch of them (one per section) if sound is wanted. I will use a program like "audacity" to capture sounds from "railfanning" videos to gather various sounds. This started with sounds for a crossing gate.
Drinking Costco Columbian w/2%milk and Truvia.
Thank you, Jimmy. Proverbs 24. 😘👍🏻👍🏻👈✌️👏
Good morning Jimmy I am enjoying a presidents Choice morning blend with 1 sugar
I have found that the glues we use is not holding. I have used Testers, Mastercraft, and the Plastic Weld but after 3 years the models start falling apart.
I have used Super Glue but hate getting on my fingers than finger prints all over the place. Have used Super Glue with Baking Soda and it seems to work but it leaves a build up.
I also have issues with all of my BLI units. seems to be very common.
Americano in ma cup this morning.
Did you forget the several links mentioned during the video?
Great video and lots of info which helps a lot ,was wondering ,have limited space ,basic shelf using t trak modules ,saw the video you did on seanery on t trak module really great are you going to do another
Hello! Yes! I am actually awaiting some T trak kits to try out.
Another great video. Question: Have you compaired the 2 types on 3D printers? Show the difference between the two. Thanks
I am drinking starbucks with as usual as 1 table spoon of sugar Jimmy.
Did you say a few weeks ago that you might be coming to the light side, er, HO scale?
Drinking 8 O'clock whole bean original with milk and sugar. Hey Jimmy, how can I send you a local coffee to try?
I would love to se a project that was using engine sound! Can the UNO be connected to the speed of the engine?
Got a request here: I am getting into N scale and the thought of putting a Dcc sound decoder into my first loco (a DCC ready Kato ES44DC) is a little intimidating whereas there are several drop in DCC only decoders. I’ve ordered the parts for the DCC ++EX build and I wanted to know if there’s a good under layout sound option? (better than no sound) I’ve read a bit about JMRIs VSD but are there any other options? I understand the reason for sound in the train itself but with a small layout I can’t imagine that sound tracking would be a problem.
And plus do they have Arduino for dummy out in print yet?
Not exactly what you're looking for but check out Paul McWorter's UA-cam channel. About 3 years ago +/- he did a series of nearly 75 tutorials on the Arduino, starting from absolute zero knowledge and it's really great.
My Broadway Limited Locomotives also having problems with so no more for me
OK JIMMY I FOUND MY JMRI NOW I NEED RASPBERRY PIE WHAT CAUSE ALL THE SHORTAGE
I want to use a couple of 36 x 80 plain hollow core door slabs for the base of my railroad in an L configuration. If I do continuous run I will have to use 15 inch radius curves at the ends and perhaps on the inside curve at the joint between the leg and foot of the L. My locomotives are two Bachmann On30 2-6-0 Moguls. Will it be ok to have the tight curves in the areas mentioned? I believe the inside or back corner of the L can use 18 inch radius though.
Those engines need minimum 18” all around I believe.
A model RR layout in the trash??? Isn’t that illegal dumping?!