you can't get away from the fact that you're going to need to know something
about the electrical aspects of model railroading
in this video I'm going to show you the basics of electricity and what you're
going to need to get by in model railroading by no means is this an
all-inclusive explanation of the principles of
electricity I'm not an electrical engineer I've studied electronics
I've been electrician in my earlier years I'm retired now but I'm going to
tell you how you're going to get by with the basic knowledge of some of the
principles of electricity in this video right here so let's get started with it
right now I'm Tom Kvichak and this is Toms Trains and Things this channel
was created to help other modelers who are in need of guidance in pursuing
their dream of building a model railroad and one of the main things that you're
going to need to know about is how these locomotives operate on the track and
you're going to need to know just a little bit of the principles of
electricity and electronics in doing so and I'm going to show you that here and
we're going to go through all this stuff right here right now so let's go and get
started with it most of the manufacturers take care of all the hard
parts in the locomotives they put all the electronics in there and then the
decoder manufacturers and everybody that makes the little gadgets like those
little things down here from digitrax they take care of all the complicated
stuff but you still have to connect those to your railroad to make the thing
operate I'm going to teach you Ohms Law I'm going to tell you a few other things
I'm going to I'm going to show you in another video how to use a multimeter
and it doesn't have to be like this this is a good one you can get any multimeter
and but that'll be another video besides this one here but I'm just going to go
through the principles of electronics electricity
go through Ohm's Law and some other little things on here how to hook up
switches terminology and all the little things that you need to know when you're
looking at some of the diagrams that they have for these items and everything
else that you're going to need to know about the electrical components first
thing we're going to talk about is Ohms law now this little chart right here
this little pie chart there that's a little bit complicated and this that
goes into really great detail but what I'm going to do is just go over the
basics of Ohms law and we're going to talk about voltage current and
resistance and that's the three factors in Ohm's law voltage equals current
times resistance plain and simple and this goes back to the math classes you
had long long time ago saying what am I going to need all these formulas for
well anyway here it is you're going to need it for finding decoders if your
locomotive isn't listed for a specific decoder you can find out what decoders
you're going to need by how much amperage your locomotive draws let me
turn this thing around so we could go on the whiteboard so I can give you a
little demonstration of what we're talking about here it's right over there
I'm going to be using this board right here so you could see what I'm talking
about that is Ohm's law and that was created by Georg
Ohms along Georg ohm a long time ago E is voltage it could be referred to as
potential electro-motive force a lot of different things depending on what
school you went to I is the current R is the resistance and they're measured in
volts E Voltage Volts I current amps R resistance ohms
you're going to see this diagram a lot about DC about hooking up your track
these two red lines right here are your track and these two blue lines here are
your feeders going to your track with the transformer there now this is this is
just like DCC these are your feeder wires right there and you're also going
to have your bus wires down here so that's the same thing here you got your
track you got your feeder wires right here and then you got your bus wires
right here and then somewhere along the line down here you got your command
station or if you're doing DC
you have your transformer right there so basically this is what you're going to
be looking at for the very first time whenever you're hooking up your tracks
and you're going to wonder what is going on what are all these things about okay
whenever you have a little dot right there that means that's a connection
you'll see that a lot when you have a little thing that jumps over a wire here
that means they're not connected okay I'm going to show you a few more symbols
that you're going to need to know that could be a battery or that could be your
power source battery or power source
that's a symbol for a fuse now I'm not an artist here but that's the symbol for
a resistor that is a symbol for a single pole single throw switch this right here
at the bottom one right here is a single pole double throw switch now comes the
fun part now if you want light bulbs or something like that anytime you have
anything it might be shown as a circle it could be a light bulb it can be a
motor and they'll and they'll usually identify it with a letter inside of it
of what it is and it's the same thing as resistance for a resistor because that's
going to be something in the circuit that you're going to be dissipating the
power from your battery or your power source and these drawings right here I
have the power source of battery switch and a lamp I'll use the lamp of that
little thing right there it could be anything it could be a diode it
it could be a LED it can be a motor in there if you want to lonely be in there
we could put a little resistor in there too but to make to simplify things that
made it as a lamp also this drawing right here is the same as this drawing
right here and is the same as this drawing right here we're assuming that
this is where you have additional items on a line and here's a switch here's the
lamp and this goes to ground so all three of those are identical it's just
different ways of showing the same thing now you may see batteries like that okay
each one of these is a cell in the battery okay but as far as model
railroading goes you'll probably only see one or you may see it as a coil on
your transformer like that has your power source because there's going to be
another one up here now let me see if I can do that okay that is a transformer
this is your primary and this is your secondary okay you might have 120 volts
here and you might have 12 volts here now there's other circuits in there that
would change this 12 volt because this is AC that they see but then you'll have
some other circuitry in here with capacitors diodes of maybe a little
voltage regulator to make it DC I'm going to show you another thing that you
might see in a drawing and I'll explain this to you if you ever see this this is
this by itself is a single pole single throw switch but when you put another
set of contacts in there and you get a bass line in between that you won't see
the box around it but I just put the box there so you know that it is one unit
but that is a double pole single throw switch that means there's two contacts
in that switch this is what a double pole double throw switch is going to
look like in your diagram you're going to have two different terminals for each
wiper on your switch and it's connected internally so what you're going to have
is six terminals and this is what the bottom of the switch is going to look
like these right here in the center are going to be these right here and then
the two outside ones are going to be these two right here this is like the
wiper right here and it's either goes this way and when this one goes this way
this one goes this way they're both connected and so when you flip the
switch the other way these two are connected so that's a double pole double
throw switch just to make things a little bit more clear a single pole
single throw switch this is just the side view of it you'll have two
terminals on it and this is what it looks like in the wiring diagram okay
and the double pole single throw switch is going to have three terminals on it
right here and these two terminals here so you'll be able to use ones
normally-closed and ones normally open here so and
you'll be able to when it switches it'll switch down that way so what this is
right here you'll see on the switch itself it may be real small on there but
it it will identify them with a C an NC and NO almost the switches will have
that on there so you know which contact is normally closed that's when it's just
sitting there and you may have like a little thing on here and
there's another wiper an actuator thing and then it will push this thing in to
switch between normally closed and normally open it will switch that down
to here so this one becomes closed and that one becomes open so there you go
with that also you have a normally closed switch ok on a normally closed
switch the white you have continuity going through there so this is normally
closed this is a normally open switch most of them are normally open switch it
could be a push button okay and you'll have a little deal and I'm not the
greatest artist but there's a push button and you have normally open push
buttons and normally closed push-button on the normally open push button you
have an open circuit there so when you push the push button in it closes the
circuit when you have a normally closed push-button you have continuity normally
and then when you when you push the button you break that continuity and it
opens up so that's the difference between normally close to the normally
open is just a little review of Ohm's law here here's a little pyramid with it
E equal I times R I equal E over R and R equal E over I don't forget to
subscribe and ding that Bell that's a sorry-looking Bell right there but you
get the idea so you could be notified whenever I have a new video coming out
and like I said I'll have one on the meter and I'll have more videos coming
out on principles of electrical on your model railroads so take a look for
I hope I covered enough in this video for you to understand the basics of
electrical design and principles in model railroading if I missed anything
and you have any questions don't forget you could leave a comment down below and
ask me anything you want and I'll answer it for you and I'll probably do a Q&A on
it for you so don't forget Ohm's law the little pyramid there and I'm taping this
with my phone so I can't show you the little apps but there are apps and I'll
have the links for them or the description of the apps that you could
use where you could do a lot of calculations and a lot of different
things for your model railroad on there so check them out here we go Toms
Trains and Things check out all my other videos that I have up and check out my
webpage and if you would like to support this channel and my webpage go to
patreon/ tomkvichak
No comments:
Post a Comment