Signal and CTC Circuit Boards

Here are photos of three boards I had made for ease in building and controlling signals as well as wiring my CTC board.

Signal Control Circuit.  8 bits via CAT5 cable controls 12 LEDs in four signal heads.  Can therefore control an OS section with a two three color signal heads for each route and one two head three color signal for the point end of the turnout.

Breakout board route eight wires from a CAT5 cable to eight screw terminals.  Many uses when using CAT5 rather than single wires or phone cables.

Same breakout board but with Molex connector which allows connection to DIN24, DIN32, DOUT24, DOUT32, or SMINI boards.  Eliminates building molex connectors and crimping molex pins.

Progress Report on Wood Trestle

Here is a snapshot of the deck of the wood trestle I am building for Blackwater grade.  It is almost a scale 160' long and 80' high.  The deck will be painted later and NBW castings will be added.  Built with strip both commerial and some homemade stringers.  The rail is code 125 and I am using Right O' Way's rail joiners which have the bolt detail cast into them.  Snapshot taken with Kodak Easyshare C180.  Better photos later.

Second Part of CTC is nearing completion

Backside of Lower Panel with Switch Wiring only. No LEDs wired yet. The use of RG45 connectors allows panel to be unpluged and moved to a work bench for repair or for changes.  This board has seven Breakout Boards.  Each has a RG45 connector.  Each DIN32 and DOUT32 cards also have Breakout Boards.  A simple CAT5 patch cable connects them together.  When the LEDs are wired they will connect to our custom Signal Control Circuit board (SCC) which controls 12 LEDs with an eight wire CAT5 cable.  The SCC then connects to the Breakout Boards via a CAT5 cable.

Front of Lower Panel

Half of the CTC showing Model Boards and Lower Panels

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Update May 22, 2012 Painting Finished

My Son in law and his brother have finished drywalling, priming, and painting the ceiling and the backdrop for the layout.  Below are a selection of photos of the results.  Now we have to clean off the top of the layout and get back to building the WV&TRR.

Layout Update May 9, 2012

It has been a while since I posted to the blog.   Currently we are in the process of dry walling the ceiling of the layout room.  We have used 50 sheets of drywall.  Today by Son In Law tapes about 40% of the ceiling.   After taping all of the ceiling there are two additional coats of drywall compound, then primer, and finally paintint the entire ceiling.   Then we can get back to building the railroad.

Progress Report 03/28/12

We have continued to install the drywall ceiling.  So far we have hung 24 of the expected 60 sheets of drywall over the existing railroad.  No one should ever build a layout without finishing the ceiling first.  It is a real pain to hang drywall over a layout.  However the improvement in the looks of the layout will be worth the pain and problems incurred now.  I am also installing Can type recessed lighting to illuminate the aisles.  The layout during construction and during operation will have it own lighting system consisting of 100+ CFL 13 watt lights, some spots in areas of special interest and blue rope lights to allow for night operations.  We also have red ropes at the horizon to create a sunrise and sunset look.  When LED lights become more affordable, the CFLs will be replaced as they burnout with LEDs.  When we then reach the point that the entire layout is lit by LED and rope lights, I will add dimmers and some type of automatic day to night sequencer.

Hopefully the drywall work will be done in a couple of months and we can then return to scenery, the CTC system, structures and rolling stock.