Color coding wire on the cheap.

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Hi all, Way back when starting in DCC there was a warning - "use a color code and stick to it". I didn't and really regret it!. Part of the problem was living far from decent electrical, electronic supply houses. Yes there is Radio Shack. The was also an expense factor with 100' rolls of 18 - 14 ga wire.

I bet lotsa you started by splitting 14 ga romex - 1-black & 1-white wire plus a bare ground. Recently in trying to clean up my mess I discovered things. 1) you can buy "thermostat" 16 - 18 ga cable in desired lengths from your local hardware stores. It can be had from one to seven conductors all different colors except black. Stretch it tight and cut the cover with a razor blade and you have colored wires 16 -18 ga. These are big enough for reasonable bus runs from block detectors, etc to track feeders. For Digitrax I use BDL162s and each zone has four blocks - brown blk-1, red blk-2, orange blk 3, yellow blk-4. or whatever, you can go on with green, blue, violet, ...

The big one. use white wire and magic markers by putting marks a reasonable distance apart so you can tell one white form another. You can also magig mark any lighter color wire this way. I also code my Digitrax Loconet 6-wire phone cables with magic markers.

Color coding with easily obtained wire mad easy

Larry (Lawrence) Costa Colorado, USA

-- Larry Costa (lbcosta@earthlink.net), November 03, 2004


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