Here is how the cabinet looks most of the time:
The goal was to have a clean appearance with everything easily accessible for operations and maintenance. Regular operations can be performed by opening the cabinet to start the layout and get the throttles -- at which point the doors can be closed again until operations are over. For maintenance the cabinet can be pulled away from the layout, since it is on rollers, to access the wiring in back of the cabinet or underneath the layout.
Here is the view with the doors open (in this view the cabinet is pulled away from the layout):
The top shelf is currently for storage of throttles and of Digitrax manuals. I've earmarked key pages that get frequent use, like CV tables, how to program consists, Ops mode programming steps, etc. As the number of throttles grows I'll likely need to have a separate place to store them.
The second shelf has the DCS100 command station on the left and the power strip on the right. The power strip is screwed lightly into place and all the power supplies needed for the layout are plugged in place. If you click on the photo for the larger view you'll see they are also all labeled with their purpose. In this setup, under normal operations the starting and stopping of the layout is done with just the main switch on this power strip.
The DSC100 has various wires attached to it but I've tried to keep those organized too. The power and ground outputs, red, black, and green, go directly from the DCS100 to the barrier strip on the left wall. Any device that needs connection to the DCS100 is connected to the barrier strip, not to the DSC100 directly. All power wire is 14 gauge, and as with the rest of the layout pairs are twisted together and labeled.
The DCS100 also has a programming track set up in front of it. This allows for quick decoder programming during an operating session if for some reason Ops programming won't work. It can also be used at other times, but for normal locomotive work I'll probably use the Digitrax Zephyr at my work desk.
The empty space on the second shelf is reserved for a booster, which may be needed when I start building the upper deck of the layout, or for a second power strip.
The third shelf is for power management, as can be seen from the labels in the larger picture. On the left is the PSX4, which provides power to districts 1, 2, 3 and the auto reverse (AR) sections that are controlled by the PM42 (the middle device). These are lightly held in place and have padding protecting them from the shelf itself. The empty space on the right is reserved for the second PSX4 for the upper deck districts. As I plan to have 8 power districts plus a district for the PM42 I will also need a PSX1. I plan to place that in front of the PM42 and wire it to the PM42.
During operations if we get a circuit break or if we otherwise have to view the power management LEDs for problem diagnosis we simply open the cabinet to see them.
The bottom shelf is currently occupied only by the main power supply for the DCS100. (It's a DCC Specialties device, recommended by Mike Gleaton.) The rest of the space is reserved for an additional power supply for a booster, if it turns out that is needed, and for transformers for the lights and switches.
Here is a look behind the cabinet:
This does look a bit messy with all that wire, however if you look closely you'll see I've tried to tame the mess a bit by setting up hooks around the back of the cabinet for routing the wires. Plus, the wires are all organized into labeled, twisted pairs. However, because the cabinet must be allowed to roll away from under the layout there has to be some slack in the wires that connect the cabinet to the layout. All these wires can be disconnected, if need be, by plug or by undoing the electrical pigtails, and all are labeled to allow easy reconnection. However, the slack wires do make it look messy. The wires for power districts 3 and 4 and for the upper deck AR section have already been deployed, so that attaching these later will be a simple matter of connecting them to the wire ends at the back of the cabinet, instead of having to add wires inside the cabinet.
One other minor wiring standard emerged from this work, and that had to do with the Digitrax UP5, UR91 and UR92 front panels. These are distributed throughout the layout on front fascias to allow plugging in of Digitrax throttles anywhere. UR92 is the two way radio receiver panel, the two UR91s are one-way radio receiver panels, and the UP5s are basic panels.
These panels have two wired connections. One is Loconet, a 6-pin cable. The other is a single 18 gauge power wire. The single wire, together with the loconet ground wire, allows up to 10 panels to share a single power supply. The UR92 doesn't have the power wire because it requires a dedicated power supply. The power supply for the 10 other panels is connected to the UP5 nearest the power cabinet.
One standard I'm following is to configure the loconet in a branching configuration, avoiding loops, per the Digitrax recommendation. The other is to label the power wire "UP5" every few feet to distinguish it from other wires. The Loconet cable is not labeled, as it is clearly unique.
The last point is placement of the panels. Usage-wise, radio throttles can connect to any panel, not just the radio ones. The one-way throttles use any panel to plug-in to select or dispatch locomotives, but once that is done the throttle is disconnected and communication is automatically done via a one-way receiver. For this reason the two UR91s panel/receivers are placed in the two different rooms, and roughly in the middle of the rooms. The two-way throttles don't need to plug in at all unless they get confused, however they do need to be initialized when they start up by plugging into the UR92 for two seconds. For this reason the UR92 is placed on the right side of the cabinet, so that you can plug in at the same place that the throttle is stored. That also is roughly the center of the layout, which should minimize any chance of radio interference. You can see the UR92 panel in the upper right of the first photo with this post.
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