They sell them online too

I've thought the same for my set. Great idea

Great suggestions! A question for you … if you put a wye or turnout in to be able to access a yard from either side of the layout, where your polarity would change at some point, how do you address this? 🎃

@@SD45-ET44AC I assume you're using DCC - the answers are different if you're using DC. The answer requires two parts. First, the easy part: if you are using insulated frog turnouts (and it looks like Jimmy is - you can see the black plastic frogs - you don't have to worry because the frog is where the shorts occur. If you are using metal frogs, the frog needs to be isolated from all four connecting rails and powered separately. (Some turnouts with metal frogs are advertised as "DCC Ready" - these usually have small plastic insulators in the rails surrounding the frog.) You can feed the power using the auxiliary contacts on a Tortoise or Blue Point switch machine, or you can take the lazy way out and use a Frog Juicer. The Frog Juicer detects a short and automatically reverses the polarity in the frog before the DCC system "notices" the short. Now for the harder part: reversing loops: You need to isolate the loop where you can maximize the length of the isolated section. For a reversing loop, that means isolating all four rails at the frog end of the turnout. For a wye, you would isolate all four rails on any of the three turnouts which connect to the rest of your layout. Then you need a DCC auto reversing unit (many suppliers, including Tam Valley, who make Frog juicers). You connect DCC power to the auto reversing unit, then connect the autoreversing unit to the reversing loop. If you have a long reversing loop, you make a sub-bus from the auto reverser and connect the track feeders to that sub bus. The auto reverser will detect and switch polarity when needed.

I am very curious and interested... why do you prefer not to use red and black wires colours for DCc wiring? I do but I am always open to more ideas.

@@scentgrasslakerailway My layout has a LOT of DC power users - I try to incorporate lighting effects - LED, incandescent, and Arduino - into every structure I build. In order to supply DC power to all those users, I have a DC power bus which runs right alongside my DCC bus wires. Now here's where it gets confusing: when I chose my DCC bus colors, I chose red and white: the red bus powers the rear rail (i.e. farthest from the front of the layout) - R for red and R for rear. Then when I ran my DC bus, I chose green for positive and black for ground. No problems so far, because electricity doesn't care about wire color :) But now we come to feeders for all those DC power users: I use 1.25 mm JST connectors for all my DC power - they are compact, so the connector will fit through a 1/8" hole in my layout, and they are keyed, so you can't accidentally reverse positive and ground, which is important for LEDs. (This also let's me swap structures around conveniently: I know that I can plug any building into any DC power drop.) BUT, the JST connectors are pre-wired with red and black leads. Black obviously goes to my black DC bus, but I always have a little mental hitch when I connect the red lead from the JST to my green DC bus. Is it a big deal? No. Have I ever connected a DC lead to the DCC bus? No. I guess I'm just anal-retentive enough that it bothers me. In my defense, I will say that I have been amazed to see how the profusion of wiring under my layout has multiplied; and I believe choosing and sticking to a color coding scheme is critical to trouble-free wiring.

@@rwissbaum9849 thanks

Thank you!

You need to cut gaps on every side of your frog . It will short if you don’t . Then you need a frog juicer for your frog.

Most people clean up their wiring later as a later project.

@@kraigsickels3918 I'm use to seeing machine cabinets and the such where wires are routed properly the first time. Silly me. 😊