Electrical experiments

That was the beginning. The tree stump in the middle carries the control board. Some wooden pegs hinder the soil from getting down. But in the meantime, ants ate this rest of a tree stump so that I'd had been afraid to lose my control centre sometime in the future. But in the meantime, this state is history (-; .

Something electrical?
The railway is outdoors that's why the electrical wires has to be bigger than regularly needed. Five winters had been overcome. And the layout made it!
For the specialists: the wires for the driving current have a diameter of 2,5 mm²; the wires for the accessoiries have a diameter of 1,5 mm² . Totally approximately 900 m of cables have been used.

A rolling container includes all devices for the power supply (current for locomotives and accessoiries as well as the central unit for digital control). This container can be taken to the control centre if required. But this solution isn't wether-proof so I've to construct a new one that fulfils this need.

The future control board sticked on glas plates of acryl. Switches, key switches and LED's will be mounted in the holes. The rail sketch was made with WinRail v. 4.0.

Rows of switches for the illumination of the layout. Since the illumination of the houses, lamps etc. is divided into groups the impression of the layout in the evening can be varied continuously.

Final operational test of the new wiring - Are there any questions left....????

Here are some additional modules for

lamps and lights

relays and LED's

switches and fuses

driving current

etc.

This module is the central part of the control. For the switching I use bistabil relays. The clou are the capacitors (1 bipolar 470 µF/20 V or as 2 Elko's 1000 µF/20 V soldered together at the plus poles - see the connection diagram). The EPL-drives receive both half-waves of the current instead of one because the capacitors give their charge away during the "gap" and are recharged subsequently. This additionally provides for a "barrier"; the coiles of the drives don't get any current (almost) after recharging and can't be be destroyed by burning out. This little trick is derived from the book "Faszination Gartenbahn" of the MIBA-Verlag/Germany.

If there are any questions about the components of the circuit please send me an email.

One year later ..... with a little help of some guys from Görlitz/Germany (-:

Now some facts: Ca. 400 m wires of different sizes, 100 switches/ key switches, 90 LED's, 7 transformers, 70 relays, 70 capacitors and something more as well as some nerves if the equipment didn't make what it should do. Totally, ca. 3,000 of soldered joints were made.

So it looked like....

3.000 soldered joints .... On this way, I learned to sold at least ... (-;

I think it's very simple - just only connect according to colours (-;

Power supply for the vehicles and general power supply - being connected with multiple plugs (keeping deinstalled during winter time).

* Photos 1995 - 00