Upgrading the Wiring on the D&J Railroad


D&J RailRoad

Professor of HO
I pulled several hundred feet of wiring out of the layout over the past few months. The layout was having issues of signal control and intermittent false block occupancy issues as well. I've been doing patch work on the issues over the years and obviously, I've prolly got mixed up on the right wire to the right tracks.
I removed all the control boards from the panel section and started with tracing each and every wire and making new connections to the control boards. I've uncovered several mistakes that seem to have been the cause of the problems I was seeing.
I didn't want to go that far but it seemed like the most logical thing to do as I kept finding the wiring issue.
Getting things back together now and reprogramming the signal system as I got along. I'm quite happy with how the signals are working now.

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Crawling under the benchwork to trace wires is getting difficult with my bad knees.

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Yeah Ken sometimes you just have to do it but it’s worth it!
Thankfully my layout wiring is much simpler… at least so far.
I use to work on big trucks and trailers after someone had repaired them several times, that’s when I would rip it all out and start from scratch.
 
Finally getting some progress on this major wiring overhaul.
I noted in another thread that I reset the SE8C and that cleared up some major problems.
Went back through the ribbon wires and checked every lamp to be sure I had the right address for each one then went through the computer to make sure they were all correct. Found at least half a dozen that were wrong.
Now running a couple train around the layout and just watching the computer screen for the block occupancy and the signal color change as the trains move around the basement empire.
 



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