Wiring the Atlantic Pacific Railroad

The APRR is a wiring wonder, as I’ve been told by others who have taken a look under the levels. I was always into wiring as this was taught to me by my father. When my father did wiring, either around the house or at his work, he taught me a lot, something I will never forget. In his honor and memory, an industry is dedicated to him on a corner of the layout as you enter, Irving Depot.

The layout is powered by an NCC DCC Power Pro Radio system, a 5 AMP power supply. In addition, due to the size of the layout, and the number of engines on it at one time, I needed to divide the layout into what is termed ‘districts’. The upper level is one, the lower level is another, and the engine facility is the third. Each district is powered with 5 AMPS, more than enough to keep engines on the tracks. In the world of DCC, all engines are ‘live’ and will only run when you send a signal to a particular engine. If you google ‘running trains in DCC’, you will find hours and hours of reading material.

The layout is basically a two track dog bone layout with many crossovers. There are 2 tracks that go to/from the helix and freight yard. When you have crossovers going in opposite directions, you need to add some type of protection to the layout to prevent short circuits. In the world of DCC, they make a device called an ‘auto reverser’. This device detects when the polarity switches on the track when an engine crosses into that section. It’s protected by insulated gaps when you enter and leave the reversing loop. My layout has 10 auto reversers. There are 5 on top, 2 on the helix, and 3 on the lower level. In addition, the staging yards on the lower level have circuit breakers added to prevent against short circuits caused by derailments or some other issue with an engine or car. All of auto reversers and circuit breakers have on/off toggle switches in the event of a short that’s not visible, I can kill power to sections of the layout to see if the short still exists. It’s pretty much fail-safe.

Switches are controlled at various places of the layout. All track switches that come up from the helix and pass thru both interlocking areas are controlled in one area. This location is in the northeast corner of the layout and is the ‘dispatcher’s area’. All train movements are under the control of the dispatcher until they arrive at the freight yard, in the center of the layout. Once they enter the yard limit area, the Yardmaster takes over. Dispatcher and Yardmaster control the railroad. Once trains are sent around the layout to industries, the person running a local control those switches as these are off the mainline and not under the dispatcher’s jurisdiction.

Staging tracks are on the lower level. There are 9 thru staging tracks, each broken into two sections. This gives me the ability to store 2 trains on one track or one long train. In addition, if two trains are stored on one track, I’ve added on/off toggle switches to kill the power to them, if need be. Under the main section of the layout are 8 stub end staging tracks, all wired with on/off toggle switches.

The layout has a number of operating signals at both interlocking areas, all manually controlled by the dispatcher on the panel. These are PRR type signals, another sign of the ones used on the LIRR, PRR and others. In the freight yard, color dwarf signals are controlled by the yardmaster.

Last, but not least is that I’ve probably over-wired the layout, but I rarely have any electrical issues. As a final note, all wiring on the layout, from the main power supply to each district, reversing loop, circuit breaker, switches, signals and relays are all documented on paper for reference, if I need to trace a short that I can’t visibly detect. I probably have more wire under my layout than Verizon has on my entire block!