A Bit of a Boost

A small section of the wiring beneath the layout showing the bus
wires (blue and brown) and the wires to the track (white)

The Bachmann E-Z Command 5A Power Booster- 36-520

Because our layout is somewhat on the large side and, with the addition of the Diesel Depot, is now larger still, we have been experiencing increasing problems with power reaching (or, rather, not reaching) all areas. This has proved to be especially so in the southern half which now includes said Depot.

We had long since wired the northern section but have been relying on Hornby point clips to get the power all the way around the southern extension. So, it would be fair to say that we have been very fortunate to get away with it for as long as we have done although, of course, it was always our intention to extend the bus to this half of the layout. However, we tended to concentrate on getting the building work done first before we turned our attention to the electrics.

Well, following the addition of the Diesel Depot we definitely started to get some  stuttering performances from many of our locos, particularly in and around Sueston, and it became quite clear that we could not postpone the wiring any longer.

So, during the Christmas break, we commenced this work by soldering lots of wires to the track at various suitable locations around the southern section and, then, connected these wires to the bus that now traverses the entire layout running beneath the baseboards.

I think that we have probably added more wires than we need but it definitely seems to have done the trick because, upon testing it last weekend, the difference in the performance of the locos was amazing.

Something else that we had always intended to do, in order to improve performance, was to connect a Bachmann E-Z Command 5 Amp Power Booster between our Dynamis Pro Box and the layout. Well, with the wiring now completed, it seemed like a good time to do this so we purchased one at the weekend. It is not connected as yet but, when it is, it should provide more power to the track and will mean that we can run more locomotives without seeing any loss of performance.

I will report back with our findings in a future posting.