Common Rail Wiring

Take a sketch or drawing of your layout that shows both tracks and mark the outside rail as plus and the inside one as minus.

Common rail wiring. What you do is always insulate the same rail leaving the other one connected. As the loco crosses the gaps a short on either rail can reverse a autoreversing booster no optional wipers needed. All the feeder wires from the common rail black wires can be connected to the one common power bus black that runs around your entire layout usually below the plywood base. Common rail wiring uses a single master heavy duty gauge wire that is shared by all electrical devices powering the layout as part of their common current path.

You wire the common rail to the terminals on both cab a and cab b terminals which are when their direction switches are set the same. Hello guy the buss wire would be a heavy gauge wire that carries the layout power around under the layout. Double pole double throw dpdt switches are used to route power from the power packs to the. This is called common rail wiring which works well for wiring signals with most blocks.

However the positive rail will have red feeder wires attached which will then go separately to toggle switches or slide switches on your control panel. When wiring blocks you can either cut gaps in both rails or wire one rail constantly and only cut a single rail. I know i had some people questioning how it works. Gaps are cut in both rails at each block boundary wires run from each isolated rail in each block to the control panel.

All components of this harness are new. With reverse loops you will have to cut both rails. Hopefully the diagrams shed some light. This harness is designed for easy installation even if you have no electrical experience.

Please read entire manual before installation. Here the common is not connected to either rail and will flow seamlessly right through double gaps reverse sections ect. Sometimes you have to jumper wire around a turnout frog and gap to do this. You can use various types of model train switches for this project.

All harnesses are tested for faults before they leave the factory floor. Un common rail wiring is similar to common rail with the following differences. Install cummins common rail engine swap harness on the market. Light gauge i use solid feeder wires would run short distances from the buss wire to a solder connection on the bottom or outside of the rail.

You can use crimp type suitcase wire connectors for the feeder connection to the buss wires. Hi guys and gals my third video going into detail on how the common rail and feeders work for my layout. The common reference is supplied by an internal system common at 0v dc. One way of wiring a railroad is called common rail.