Agh Wiring!

I have nothing against wiring per se. Conception-wise I can deal with wiring planning. It’s the actual grunt work, body contorting, excruciating exercise of wiring that I disdain. My old 18’x19’ layout was in a basement, on a concrete floor. An old back-less office chair made scooting around under the bench work tolerable (but not easy, band aid consumption soared). Well, the new shelf layout, over trapped shelving (see earlier blog) made this a nightmare.

I initially, and foolishly thought I could just mount terminal strips behind the support lumber and do the wiring there. That effort was short and painful. So off to plan B, drop the terminal strips and wire (mirror image) from the front and then mount the terminal strips away out of sight. That worked.

When I built the bench work, I hammered in very large, heavy metal staples to the unseen side of the front boards to serve as wire channeling. As you can see below, the channels quickly reached capacity. (Note to self, use 2 rows of staples when we get to the crowded Woodbury module.)

Two tools that proved invaluable were a split-bladed (to hold the screws) screwdriver and an old Black and Decker foldable snake flashlight. I would never have gotten done without them when working under the bench work.

The last project decision was the control switches. The ideal is a painted panel (see below) and DPDT center-off micro-toggles (the layout is DC and I doubt if this section will see more than 2 trains in a section). To do that requires taping, painting, and drilling. That is still the long-range goal. BUT I am determined to get things running as quickly as possible (I did reach Medicare age this month!) so the short-term solution is a trio of Atlas Selectors.