The Path to Model Railroad Nirvana | Boomer Diorama ~ # 248 

Nice shot of the superintendent 🐈👍🏻

It is always worth the effort to explain that concept. People who had a train set when young, may not know about it when they start their first real layout. cheers, Rob

Really appreciate you sharing your modeling insights and wisdom.

Very good demonstration of correct wiring of your model railroad. The great thing about electricity its always the same... positive/negative...keep it documented! I found making a wiring diagram is of equal or more value than having a trackplan!!! - Andy

Since my layout is only 1 x 6 feet I installed only one power connection to the track and rely on the Peco spring switch points on my two turnouts to route power. After 4 years, so far so good (knock on wood), but I do live in fear that I may have to retro-fit a proper power buss. Since I run at very slow speeds I converted to DCC for the improved motor control and as a result discovered Keep-Alives, which are in 3 of my 4 DCC locos. Clean track and Keep-Alives together have given me excellent reliability, especially with the short-wheelbase locos I use. Cheers from Wisconsin!

I absolutely endorse this segment! The plastic insulators may not be truly necessary unless you are specifically intending to isolate your tracks into blocks. Ideal for turnouts, crossovers, grade crossings or anywhere that the two poles cross each other in theory! But as Boomer pointed out; depending on the track to provide your electrical current is just careless. Even on the prototype, where jointed rail is still used, they electrically bond each joint because the joint bars and the rails themselves are poor, poor conductors. Yes, they are steel and they CAN conduct electricity. But if you've ever seen what it looks like when a joint bar is removed, it's packed like a powder keg with rust. And while it can still conduct millions of volts of static electricity, getting a 32-volt audible range signal through it is next to impossible. Also, I really love that you supply your lights and accessories with a separate bus. That is practical and useful, for the same reasons. The only time it might be an issue is if you want to have a switch board that controls the lights and the houses, etc. independently. In that case, you would simply run a switched leg down with your bus wire to provide power when switched. And if you have an issue where lights dim slightly when something is turned on, try using an isolated return circuit wire. If you switch the negative leg, then you want a positive return leg. Or vice versa, if you switch the positive leg, then you want a negative return leg. Neither polarity matters on low voltage DC as long as you are interrupting the circuit with a switch. Some folks are hardcore at switching only the positive leg. Those folks probably spent some time working in automotive electrical where everything grounded out to the chassis and had a negative chassis ground. And while that concept is acceptable for lights and cigarette lighters, if you have any electronics you value beyond a nickel, you will power it with a fused positive and a return negative wire. I can tell you it matters in a situation where you are driving your layout with an Arduino, or Raspberry Pi, or some other microcontroller. You will likely switch the negative lead with your electronics and have a positive return leg. Boomer, if it's okay I want to use this segment to show my friends and customers how to wire their layout in the future. I will likely link your video to my website if you say it's okay? Of course I will have to warn them that watching your videos is addictive and can cost them many hours of time they were not expecting to spend while we watch you wave your magic wands and make the layout more stunning each time.

Keep Alive’s have been game changers.

The biggest con in the industry is buying a "model train accessory transformer". I have a laptop power supply for my acc bus powering my point motors 19v DC @ 5A cost $10 NZD best move I ever made. Re track reliability all the best wiring in the world can still be undone by room humidity, I run a dehumidifier and also stopped using isopropyl alcohol for track cleaning, I should rephrase that, I still use isopropyl alcohol to clean the track but I wipe the track down after with a small amount of kerosene (non-polar) across the rails then wipe that off with a dry cloth, massive improvement in reliability and the need to reclean ! Cheers. Thanks so much as always Mr Boomer.

You are so right on perfect wiring. Model railroad electrical 101 is critical to get right from the get go.

Great vid for the electrically impared. 14/2 “Romex” house wiring works great for a buss. Just strip the casing off and scrap the bare copper ground. Same for turnout or accessory buss lines.

Boomer, great little thought provoker on track wiring. I run 3 buses, my track DCC, a 12V DC bus, and a 16V AC Bus, and then the issue of keeping the Colours consistent. Some accessories want 12 volt, some 16 volt - bad purchasing decisions? (But I really wanted them). Thank you for sharing, cheers, and stay safe, Michael

A simple explanation of a great concept. Thanks.

Thank you for this. I have a difficult time understanding how electricity works. This makes it make more sense.

Basic but very important info. This combined with good track work is the basis for NIRVANA. Thanks

Boomer, I see the boss was around. Now that you've taken the mystery's out of wiring. Can you have a tutoral on rolling stock couplers and wheels. Do you have a fixed standard? So from the cheapest boxcar to the most expensive tanker whatever couplers and wheels they come with. You just change them to the River Road standard. Or do you find that on the shelf layout when your just shunting a few cars around you can use the wheels and couplers they come with? Cheers, Chris Perry. P. S weight would be another one to look at.

Thanks Boomer! Now I can reduce the amount of soldering to join rails by using insulated connectors and having feeders for each section of track as opposed to seeing big globs of solder at each joint which I see on a lot of layouts. No more stalling, and dead spots! Great explanation! 👍👍

Oh how I hate those suitcase connectors! I have a bus of 12 gauge wire and use 18 for feeders, which are soldered to the bottom of each rail so I don't have any solder globs visible. The 12 g bus is sectioned with terminal blocks every 4 to 5 feet. Positive on one side of the layout and negative on the other. I connect the bus to one end of the terminal block, which has a jumper, and the other end goes to the next terminal block. All the drops go to the terminal blocks. That way I can trouble shoot any piece of track by simply disconnecting the rails in question.

Thats why I put Current Keepers in all my engines even though it's more expensive and can be difficult to find room. With Sound and DCC, even a momentary disruption will reset the decoder and stop the sound even if the engine didn't completely stop (flywheels). I think the NMRA screwed up by not having a CC requirement in the spec.

I model n-scale so I have a mini-bus. I use 14 gauge speaker wire with Wago connectors. Works great. Great back-to basics video,

Just wanted to proffer my grateful thanks Boomer. Your videos have encouraged me back into the hobby after sooo many years and your modeling tips and advice have helped me move to new heights! Love the Tamiya Flat earth recommendation, used as a wash - goes so far!

You know, it's a sad state of affairs that I can fire up a tier lll locomotive, hook up a few thousand tons and drag it all over creation but I'm the dullest crayon in the box electrically. I'd heard you explain the bus system before and was convinced but with the diagram it's crystal clear . Got plywood in the garage and more wallspace cleaned out. Benchwork and track in the sketching stage. No more stand alone vignettes. Time to get to work! Cheers!

Nirvana what a great place to be. Thanks Boomer.

Boomer, I agree 110%. I connect the feeders from the bus(s) in the approximate middle of the rail section. I also run a feeder to every piece of rail 1" or longer. Shorter pieces get soldered on to one end or the other. My club recently built a new layout and all wiring was done using this method. Seven years later there has not been one complaint about dead spots. Keep up the good work.

Howdy Boomer! Great video on the basics of wiring. The wiring is the foundation on which the entire layout is built. Looking forward to this series of videos. Thanks for sharing 🤠

Boomer, always enjoying your tutoring... however... I could add electrical Nirvana for a modern layout :) Just throwing that bit in where my 1950's märklin runs absolutely sweetly with no track cleaning, no polarity issues, no derailments etc. My 3 rail hornby dublo: 42 turnouts, multiple reverse loops, multiple train running: 3 wires to the whole layout with one track input, no buses, isolating points cut power as appropriate: ran brilliantly. They can't compare as scenic or fidelity of realism (I'm not going to say operational realism) but there's a lot to be said about how good old quality equipment actually was/is for functional use. Sometimes there can be a couple of different paths to model railroading Nirvana... which is exactly as it should be. P.S that doyen of model railway design, the legendary Cyril Freezer, was actually a sparky by trade and he had some quite intelligent articles on model railway wiring through the years. Unfortunately through the '60's and '70's with the less than quality equipment coming out it was lost on many who were at bedt trying to get the jolly things even running...

You call it BUS, we call it a Ringleitung😊 ..."✌️🤝👍" ...Greetings, Olli

your videos have taught me so much - and i have just invested in some point motors. Electrics is a black art to me and the simple explanation of point motor wiring just lifted the fog. Simple to some people, theory of relativity complex to me! Cheers again

Buy only quality electrical products, like toggle switch and make proper tcheck before installing. Goof assembly happens. If your layout consists in an assembly of module, it´s sometimes easier to work on module at your workbench than on the layout. Keep them removable with easily disconnectable bus wirings. Imagine working long hours on track or scenery in hard to reach locations. Lift module on one side, unplug, then you´re free to work on it in confort with good lightnings and tools already on site. Thanks Boomer and simplicity is always the best.😊

Well said. There are a few in the hobby that need to be bulletproof, and wiring is one of those.

Hey Boomer, great content as always! I’ve got almost 30 years of experience in fine arts, model making, dioramas, etc, but zero experience in model railroading, from a builder/user standpoint. I’ve always loved & admired it, but from a far, since I was a kid. It wasn’t until discovering your channel maybe a year ago, that I realized I didn’t need to own a home, and/or need/want a large footprint, to build on. To make a long story shorter, thanks to you, my benchwork is complete, and I’m currently working on my track plans. Throughout the last year, I’ve been very slowly taking in info. on the electrical side of things, since this is the most foreign subject for me. At the risk of being a silly question, I’ll shamelessly ask it. Where does the running end of the bus wire end up? I understand that the standing end, connects to the power source, but where does the bus wire end up, at the other end of a point to point layout? Does it just connect to the last set of jumpers, coming down from the furthest piece of track? Sorry for the long winded message. Thanks for everything you do for the community!

Thanks Boomer. Thankfully I had a friend show this to me when I got started. I even colour code the wire to help prevent miswiring while I am bashing my head under the shelf. Next layout will be higher than 42 inches.🙄

Great bit of information, Boomer ! Needed to know this I am wiring my new layout this weekend. And appreciate this info. Thank You, Sir Bruce in Minnesota

Wow! What a great way of showing how to do this! Makes total sense never even knew what an electrical buss was. Thanks so much for the lesson! It couldn't have come at a better time as I'm starting my new 20ftx17inch HO switching layout with a little bit of scenery ,truss bridge over a river then a mountain with a tunnel at the far left end to a Fidel track modeling a compressed version of Donner Pass using trackside scenery backdrops to make the 3 scenes in a shadow box to improve the sound and immersion factor 😊

Great Video Boomer, a solid power source is crucial to a great running layout!! Gotta love the Switcher, my first ride was on a NYC SW7 when I was 5 years old, about a month afterward NYC merged with the Pennsy and became PC, they stopped using the the Switchers in Anderson Indiana and went to the venerable GP9!! Cheers!!

All my wires are soldered as I do not trust the suit case connectors. I've not had a problem in the past several roads after I learned to solder right. I am working on a way to power the points so I can paint all of the track but have positive power on my inexpensive switches with the plastic frogs.

Great wiring demo fir dcc, Abita more complicated if using straight DC with block control

Hi Boomer , I really struggle with layout wiring , the way you explain the process makes it easier to understand. Could I trouble you please to do a Vlog on how to wire a set of points with DPDT centre off switch , yea I know these is tutorials on the subject but you seem to have the gift of making it easy to understand especially for the electronic challenged like me LOL. My bus wiring is multi strand copper heavy gage about 4mm thick and has a black plastic outer casing which I just strip off and solder drop wires at every rail join which runs positive and negative bus wire , very close to how you explained in the vlong, because it in the garage and opened to temperature changes I don't solder the rail joiners. Great Vlog thanks . Shaun

Great advice thanks boomer! I already use a bus for my track and a separate bus for accessories, but I have a reverse loop that I had working, made some track changes and now it does not work. I even changed it back to original and it still does not work. But hey, I'm still having fun!

Absolutely. 100% yes, proper track wiring is paramount!

Hey Boomer, this principle is suited to successful operations for all scales. I run conventional with AC transformers in 0-scale. I have a single common bus and 6 hot bus wires with all my transformers phased together to a single common bus wire. I have taps every 6', which ensures that I have a tap within easy reach of each end of my turnouts. I soldiered all my rail joints and I also use an electrically conductive oxide inhibitor on my rails, and I believe it is the reason I can run slower, uninterrupted, consistent scale speeds running conventionally with my Lionel postwar pullmor motors. I can set my throttles at a single setting and maintain that speed even through curves for the entire loop. The bus should be tapped at the mid point of the bus from the transformer supply to reduce the voltage drop. This ensures a uniform voltage in each direction from the midpoint. Voltage drop is more of an issue with DC voltage.

Great video and information!

Your explanation of bus wiring is so clear and concise, and will be a game changer for me when I start building my first layout later this year. Do you have a Patreon page so I can make a donation?

Boomer you be surprised, (maybe not) the layouts I have been to that are a rats nest of wiring. Also the different colors on the bus itself. You give sound advise and I hope it is heeded. I had to strip my friends layout down to the bench work to get his wiring straight , I found three different colors on the bus. Thanks for the info

Thank you for clear explanation

Great advice, thank you

My big turn off at shows is a layout that doesn't run well, the one thing I always made sure was that my layouts ran well. I run busses for all my tracks, DCC accessories, lights, switch motors etc. even onto boards that don't use some of those, easy to do as you start the layout. Then in the future if I add something the bus is already nearby to connect to. Soldering is another problem I've seen, a blobby joint is probably a bad one and the number of people using acid flux, which works for a while and then rots the joint out a year or two later.

Keep up the good work ❤ Cheers

As straightforward an explanation of basic wiring that I have heard. I’ve listened to numerous RU-vid descriptions but none as to the point as this. Yes, pure nirvana for smooth locomotive operations, just as the theme music is. May I ask where you found the piece?

Wiring is the one thing I'm going to be going overkill on with my planned shelf layout. I couldn't possibly count the number of times I've seen people with electrical issues on layouts.

OK, so I learned to wire a layout as a kid from an article in Model Railroader back around 1966. You've sold me on the bus idea. It makes a lot of sense. I do have a few DCC equipped locomotives, so will eventually be yanked kicking and screaming (partly at least) into the 21st century. However, I also have a collection of old DC locomotives. Replacing them is not going to happen and converting all of them is out of the question, so I will be using the old system of block toggles. etc. Question: Probably the best route is to install an individual bus for each block? Wiring is in the planning stage, so I've got some flexibility there.

All good. May I suggest that the bus should be at least 14ga. Wire . Don't know the equivalent in metric. Then as layout expands in number of engines running you can have no fear.

Very cool👍🏻

Thanks for sharing. Very sound explanation. Do you insulate all six points of rail on your Turnouts? Interesting.

so as a bus wire, i can use any powercable and open it up and solder my feeder cables in? sound like a really nice idea. i think i have to try this. thnx boomer for the inspiration.

I would add to twist the buss wires together where there is no soldered connection

The first thing I tell a customer is nickel silver rail has no silver; it's a nickel-bearing brass and copper can carry 100 times more current [power] per square mm than brass. The rail's job is to keep trains out of the dirt, but the copper drives the models, with the track just for local power delivery. Refrain from using rail joiners for power connections; they are not trusted in the real world as they use jumpers across them for reliable signalling. The rule I tell customers is that if it is 4'' or 36'' long, the track needs a feeder; this shatters the two wires to the track mantra. You are more than 100% correct with this clip, but personally, I do not agree with solid wire. If you nick it, this can result in a fracture point. Multicore is better here. DCC real Achilles heal is the signal delivery, not the potential difference [voltage] between the wheel and track; if you cannot get the loco to run with a 14V, here, there is another issue. A decoder is constantly looking to be validated by receiving a packet with its name, power is always there but here the decoder timeout period shows up. If a valid packet is not received with a defined time period it will begin to slow down to a stop, this is to prevent runaways [refer Soundtraxx]. This is a result of poor pickup at the wipers and wheels, but it looks like the dirtiest DC operation imaginable. The rest is good maintenance, including cleaning when required. Check wipers with a piece of bond paper [carefully]; when you cannot feel a tiny bit of drag, that one is most likely not working.

Boomer, when the title sounds like the video is all about technical details: Delivers soliloquies about philosophy of modeling. Boomer, when the title sounds like a soliloquy about philosophy of modeling: Delivers a video all about technical details. I think this means you're making the point that the two are inseparable, and I'm here for it.

Thanks!

Good advice. Love it!

Hey, great video Boomer!!! I truly appreciate the reinforcement of the bus wire system. I’m intending to use 12gauge solid core wire for my bus, but I’m waffling on a feeder wire gauge. I’m going to use solid core as well. I just don’t want to over or under size them. Any thoughts???

Do you solder your feeder wires to the side or bottom of your rails?

What switch machine is that?

Buss⚡️101 Cheers 🍻

The landlord wants her old spot back

That Crawl at the start! God I wish my old DC layout could do that.

Hi Boomer . you've Got me curious , what are frog juicers not heard of them before. Shaun