The Atlantic and Southern Build Thread Continued, Part 2

[ACL1504]

Good grief......did you mow the lawn again? 

In the rain?

Jim

With thunder and lightning too! 

It's a good thing you carry a 1 iron as God can't even hit the 1 iron.

Tom

[ACL1504]

Since I still have an injured leg and can't work on the layout and very tired of laying in bed, I'll add a little more to the thread.

I used an 8 position dual row terminal strip for wiring the LEDs to toggle switches. Some terminal strips are rated 15 to 30 amps. For this exercise, I'm not sure it makes a difference and I don't know nor do I care to know what the amp rating is for this one. All I know is that I've used several and they work.

The way it is now, it won't work for the LEDs so I'm going to "kit bash" the terminal strip for my useful purpose.

I used a Dremel cut off disk and started to cut it length wise down the middle as shown below. By doing this, I'm cutting the common bar between the two screws.



And here it is cut down the middle all the way.



More in a few.

[ACL1504]

I then used a single strand of copper wire and pig tailed the terminal screws on each side of the strip.

[ACL1504]

More in a few, definitely need a cold Diet Pepsi.

[ACL1504]

You will need to decide what side you want the + and - to be. I usually make the top side the + one.



I then screwed it in place behind the location of the toggle switch panel. Again, you can see I marked the top as +/positive.



More in a few.

[ACL1504]

The power supply has a + and - wire. I tied a knot in the positive one and screwed the two wires to the right end of the terminal strip.



You can see where I'm going here, I hope. By cutting the terminal strip down the middle, adding the power supply wires, I now have 8 individual terminal screws for the LED lighting. Actually, all the wiring can be done to the + and - screws but that would be a wiring mess.



More in a few.

[ACL1504]

I used the first toggle switch for Sweaty Betty's and the Lubritorium. There are 10 LEDs in these two structures. I wired them per Slim's LED wiring diagram. I wired a red to the positive side of the LEDs and screwed the red to the top of the terminal. I used gray for the negative as I didn't have black when I wired the structures.



The gray wire goes to the bottom terminal on the toggle as shown.



More in a few.

[ACL1504]

I then cut a length of gray wire and wired one end to the center terminal on the toggle and the other end to the negative side of the large 8 position terminal strip as shown.



You can see the toggles have two terminal stubs on the rear. I positioned the toggle so the bottom stub was on the bottom. This way when I flip the toggle in the "up" position, the lights come on.



More in a few.

[ACL1504]

These two structures are 32 feet from the toggle panel.

Continued in a few more.

[ACL1504]

I wired the rest of the structures in the same way.  I have 12 structures and combined them into groups so that I used 6 toggles.






More in a few.

[ACL1504]

This is a very simple way to wire layout structure lighting. You can control how many structures you want on any one toggle switch.

I hope this was helpful to some if so let me know and I'll continue to detail how I do things. I know when I first started lighting, It was a task until I decided on this method of lighting my structures.

[Jerry]

Hey Tom yes continue.  I know nothing abut lighting and will need it for my Machine Shop/Engine House.

Jerry

[PRR Modeler]

Excellent Tom. I have been thinking lately of how I'm going to wire the 10 lights for my current build and now I know. Thank you.

[ACL1504]

Hey Tom yes continue.  I know nothing abut lighting and will need it for my Machine Shop/Engine House.

Jerry

Jerry,

Thanks for following along. If you need any help at all I'm just a phone call away.

Tom

[ACL1504]

Excellent Tom. I have been thinking lately of how I'm going to wire the 10 lights for my current build and now I know. Thank you.

Curt,

Thank you buddy, much appreciated. This is as simple as it goes for wiring lights using toggles.

Tom