DC / DCC Outdoors

[Dcollins26]

Hi all,

I’m totally new here.

I wanted to sign up as having not too long bought a property with a rather pleasant and landscaped garden (previous owners were quite green fingered) , and since pretty much moving in day I have had visions and ideas for running a track at ground level around the rockeries, patio, over or around the pond etc.

When the sun finally came out the other day I was caught with an idea whilst pottering and so I just took the shouvel out and started digging a trench/ track bed and testing radius with old scrap track.

If you’re still reading- thank you, I’ll get to the point. I promise.

I have designed a pretty simple double track large circuit, with a section in the middle where the 4 tracks converge and run on concrete blocks (pre existing).

In order to offer some flexibility I thought about adding a couple of crossovers. Nothing too elaborate as I know points outside can cause electrical continuity issues etc.

My model collection is 98% analogue, though the last couple of years I have finally been tempted over to the latest DCC sound versions of a couple releases.

I know zero about DCC and as it stands don’t even own a controller. Recently heard about Kenesis and Infinity, so those look promising…

My diliemma now being that I have read that point work has to be wired differently for DC or DCC use, and since I’m not 100% one way or the other, I don’t want to commit my trackwork. 
 

What can I do to have a system capable of running both?

 

Sorry for the long explanation

 

Thanks

David

[Clay Mills Junction]

Hi David and welcome to the forum.

So some basics, Analogue (DC) you control the power level going to the track and everything on that track goes according to the power provided. You need multiple buses (wires that carry the track power around in addition to the track) for each track that you have.

Digital (DCC) has full track power (about 16v nominally) on all the time and an encoded signal within this tells each locomotive what to do. You can have one power bus going to all bits of track so less wiring.

Important note: you can't run DC and DCC at the same time as a DC supply being back fed into a DCC controller is instant death for the controllers.

If you wire for DC then using DCC is easy because you connect the DCC controller to all lines. I would have some way of disconnecting the controllers so you can't plug the DCC in without the DC controller being unplugged.

Points aren't any more of a worry outdoors than indoors really, just make sure to spray the spring occasionally so it doesn't rust away. I've used insulated frog points with DCC and not had any problems yet.

You say you have a double track loop and then 4 tracks converge. A track plan would be useful here as you may not be able to connect some lines via crossovers.  I'm not one to advise on DCC controllers as I use a PC as my controller.

The more questions you ask the better. Good luck.

Barry.

Edited May 12 by Clay Mills Junction

[Dcollins26]

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the welcome. As I say, I have only a handful of DCC Sound locos and would like to finally be able to make use of them.

I’ll try to get a decent track plan up and would also appreciate if someone could advise regarding wiring it.

I understand what you mean regarding multiple feeds around the layout, but do they all come from the same 2 pins on the rear of the controller? (For the same line)

 

ie 12v supply coule potentially be split into 10 different feeds? Or would the 12v be reduced? I hope that makes sense. Electrics are not my forte, 12v or 240v!

[Dcollins26]

I have drawn up a rudimentary and not to scale plan of what I intend to build as a bare minimum.

As I say, I’d hoped to include some crossovers near the LH look when the lines converge, for operational flexibility.

The dashed lines are where the track will run underneath our decking.

Please feel free to download and make any annotations, I’ll take any advice I can get!

 

Edited May 12 by Dcollins26

[Clay Mills Junction]

14 hours ago, Dcollins26 said:

Hi Barry,

Thanks for the welcome. As I say, I have only a handful of DCC Sound locos and would like to finally be able to make use of them.

I’ll try to get a decent track plan up and would also appreciate if someone could advise regarding wiring it.

I understand what you mean regarding multiple feeds around the layout, but do they all come from the same 2 pins on the rear of the controller? (For the same line)

 

ie 12v supply coule potentially be split into 10 different feeds? Or would the 12v be reduced? I hope that makes sense. Electrics are not my forte, 12v or 240v!

Hi, the forum can be rather quiet at times but I'm sure more opinions will be along in a while. The rough track plan is useful.
 

You are correct in your understanding I think. The way to think about it is, if you are wiring for analogue and DCC then you are wiring for analogue. (Since DCC wiring is simpler).
In analogue, to run two trains on two lines you need two controllers or one controller with two knobs (e.g. Gaugemaster Model D.) Taking that controller, on the back are two track outputs "Track 1" and "Track 2." For the inner track you can take a pair of wires and run them from Track 1 outputs to the multiple feeds around the inner track. Then take two wires off Track 2 outputs and wire them to several feeds around the outer track. That is basic wiring for two loops of analogue. It doesn't reduce the voltage to have more feeds, voltage reduces with distance from the controller, by running a bus you actually improve the voltage at locations further frome the controller but don't worry about that for the moment.

For DCC, you only have one controller and one pair of terminals to go to both tracks. So what you do is run that one pair of DCC outputs to both pairs of track feeds.

What I do for that is have my track feeds from the analogue controller go into a row of 4 pluggable terminal blocks and the permanent railway wiring having the other side of the 4 pluggable terminal blocks. I then have the DCC controller connected to a different set of 4 pluggable terminal blocks making sure both lines are paired inner to inner rail and outer with outer rail. That way it is impossible to plug in two controllers at the same time.

[Clay Mills Junction]

14 hours ago, Dcollins26 said:

I have drawn up a rudimentary and not to scale plan of what I intend to build as a bare minimum.

As I say, I’d hoped to include some crossovers near the LH look when the lines converge, for operational flexibility.

The dashed lines are where the track will run underneath our decking.

Please feel free to download and make any annotations, I’ll take any advice I can get!

 

That is a good amount of track for an outdoor railway. A couple of notes to consider.

You'll definitely need to be able to access tracks for cleaning and rescuing stuck or derailed trains. So you'll need easy access to that track under the decking somehow.

Crossovers are fine between the top pair of lines and between the bottom pair of lines. You won't be able to have anything cross between the two inner lines at all though as the inner rail would join to the outer rail and create a short circuit.

Hope that is of use and understandable. I will try to do some diagrams in Paint to make it clearer.

Barry.