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The trains are running!
Jun. 19th, 2019 09:39 pmSeveral weeks ago I posted that my dad had gifted us some Lionel trains and I had ordered track. He then brought us a power supply. And there the project sat, since I was preoccupied with my ebikes.
Well last weekend it rained a lot and drove us in, and we decided to lay out some track. We put a big oval on a couple of folding tables in the basement. But we could not get it working since we didn't know how to wire it up. My google searches just turned up a lot of model railroad sites with electrical wiring 101 info like the difference between AC and DC, how to solder, why you should use bus bars, etc. But how do you attach it to the track? This is apparently so obvious we don't need to be told! I can see the track has connecting pads on the bottom, and which rail they go to. But which terminal does this go to on the power supply? I am sure this info is out there somewhere but I had not found it, and I don't want to risk blowing up any equipment through my own ignorance, so it sat.
On Sunday night my parents come over and we showed dad our pile of laid out track. I knew he would be pleased and it was Fathers Day after all.
So then Tuesday while I was at work, my parents spent the day driving around to all the hobby shops they ever knew of, most of which are gone now. Until they found one still open, and there they bought a piece of track that had the wires on it. And brought it over here.
We hooked it up and it is alive! The trains are running.
Now we can start work on making it niftier.
Well last weekend it rained a lot and drove us in, and we decided to lay out some track. We put a big oval on a couple of folding tables in the basement. But we could not get it working since we didn't know how to wire it up. My google searches just turned up a lot of model railroad sites with electrical wiring 101 info like the difference between AC and DC, how to solder, why you should use bus bars, etc. But how do you attach it to the track? This is apparently so obvious we don't need to be told! I can see the track has connecting pads on the bottom, and which rail they go to. But which terminal does this go to on the power supply? I am sure this info is out there somewhere but I had not found it, and I don't want to risk blowing up any equipment through my own ignorance, so it sat.
On Sunday night my parents come over and we showed dad our pile of laid out track. I knew he would be pleased and it was Fathers Day after all.
So then Tuesday while I was at work, my parents spent the day driving around to all the hobby shops they ever knew of, most of which are gone now. Until they found one still open, and there they bought a piece of track that had the wires on it. And brought it over here.
We hooked it up and it is alive! The trains are running.
Now we can start work on making it niftier.
