Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes is Right

No, I’m not changing the topic of this blog. It’s just that the theme of chapter 3 is that there is a time for everything, a time to laugh and a time to cry, a time for peace and a time for war, etc. I knew that I was eventually going to have to put together some kind of electrical switching if I wanted any kind of versatility to my track and layout. The only problem is that I just wasn’t feeling it. I knew that with the help of my dad, I designed and wired a pretty impressive switch box for my previous layout, but that was over 30 years ago. I’ll go into some detail below, but I knew that I didn’t want to reuse my old box. I knew that I was going to have to redesign a new one. But there was nothing. No spark. No ideas. Nothing! It was actually kind of depressing. It was like writer’s block when you’re trying to start a novel. You start to think that it’s never going to get written.

Then over the Labor Day weekend I wanted to do some rudimentary wiring, just to get some kind of power to the track. I started playing around with ideas of how I wanted to temporarily (sadly) mount a fuse block for the battery, a couple static controllers, etc., when the mental “block” was shattered. 💡 💡 💡Suddenly I had a really good idea of what I wanted to do. In the matter of a few minutes I went from being depressed on the topic to not being able to stop thinking and planning about it. I spent the rest of the afternoon thinking it through and thinking it through. Now I just needed an enclosure, some switches, and lights. I spent all that evening surfing through the internet for the right kind of enclosure and for one of the specialty switches. To give you an idea of what I have in mind, I first need to show you what I put together over 30 years ago.

The switch in the upper left changes the direction of the car in one of the lanes. The matching switch on the other side of the box will change the direction of the other lane. That thing that looks like a bar between the two is actually a machined piece of metal that my dad either had or made. What it does is sit on top of two more switches and forces them both to be thrown at the same time. Throwing the switch pair in one direction or the other will switch the lane that your controller controls with the other lane. I have since found one switch that will do the work of both of those. In fact that was one of the things that I stayed up late for that first day the “light bulb” went off for my new control box.

The red light comes on when the circuit breaker next to it is tripped because of a short. The little red breaker was dismounted from the inside. That’s why it looks like it kind of sank into the control box.

The green light below that simply indicates that you have power turned on for the track and the switch next to it is the switch that turns the main power on or off.

My new box will have these features plus some others. I haven’t finished designing it yet because I wanted to get this post out. I really want to be a little more consistent with my blog posts. However the new box, which will be bigger, just came in today along with a blank cover that I will drill holes in when I’ve finalized exactly what I want.

You may be wondering why the big coil of cable connected to the old control box. This was an idea my Dad and I came up with way back when. It’s something I will NOT be repeating but it was a really cool idea at the time. Back 30-35 years ago, I did not have any group of friends that would want to race with me. I probably should have, but because I didn’t, I just built the table and track for my own enjoyment. So, the connections to power and the controllers were more or less proprietary.

The table back then was big. It was 8X16 feet and accessible on 3 sides. One of the short ends was on a wall. I had small boxes with custom connectors mounted on the center of each of the 3 accessible sides. See the picture below.

I had power run to each of these three boxes and I could plug the control box into any of these receptacles. The control box had a mating plug at the end of the long cable (actually a cable pair).

I would then wire mating plugs to the end of the controllers that would plug into the two smaller sockets you saw above. Basically, this would allow me to control and race from any side of the table I chose. it was a really cool, custom concept but not very inviting to anyone who might come in from the outside with their own pet controller. My plan with the new box is to have it mounted in one central location and all the racing will be done from there.

So there you have it. I went from being kind of depressed because I didn’t know how I was ultimately going to connect power to everything, to being excited and not being able stop thinking about it. I hope over this weekend that I’ll be able to finish designing and deciding exactly what kind of controls and indicators I want so in the coming weeks and weekends I can start putting it together.