Weekend Update On The Florida Layout

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

We're back in Florida for a while. Weather is much better down here than in NJ (sorry my northern followers). 

I brought down more freight cars for the layout along with a few other things that I needed like some push button switches, toggle switches, and some tools for some detail work. Spent most of last week wiring the lower level and the helix. A little each day so I can do other things down here with the CFO.

Wiring the helix took a little time as I needed to add circuit breakers to each track and isolate it from the rest of the layout. I thought I had a few of them down here, but needed more. Found them on Evilbay and they arrived last Friday. Here you see them installed inside the helix area.

The terminal strip is fed from another terminal strip that runs from the main track bus under the layout. Once at the first terminal strip it splits to each circuit breaker. Each circuit breaker then goes into the terminal strip you see above. 

The wires on this terminal strip are fed from other terminal strips that cover the helix tracks. The image below has two terminal strips. The one on the left overs the two tracks on the top by the upper level and the tracks going into the helix. The one on the right covers all of the drops from the tracks on that side of the helix. The wires are run down below and I put square tubing around them, just for aesthetics. 

This terminal strip covers the drops on the opposite side of the helix. These pics are also used for references and the drops below are labeled underneath as well. 

This was completed earlier in the week. The next step was to take out the NCE Power Cab system and replace it with the NCE Powerhouse Pro system. This was taking place last Wednesday. I was ready to launch and then it hit me! I didn't have the power supply that is used to power the system. It's always sold separately. I've had it down here since December and forgot that I needed it, and I didn't have a backup one at home, so Evilbay again to the rescue! It arrived today, and we wired it up tonight.

The wiring was completed, added the radio component and was off to test it. Turned it on and we're in business!! The ProCab is wireless and we ran the switcher thru its paces up to the top of the helix. I needed to clean some track and once I did that, tweaked some of the rail joints and we're good to go!

Now that the system is in place, it's time to continue with the upper level track plan. I do know some of the locations for some of the industries will change. Updates as they happen! 

Thanks for reading!