Ross Custom Switches;

Connect button green to motor green, button yellow to motor yellow. You can join all the reds together, and all the blacks together. Connect red and black to a 14V power source. You can use whatever you want to tidy it up... staples, loom, conduit, etc... 

The only thing I use a terminal strip for is the red and black, so that the power supply is disconnectable.

Make sure red goes to transformer Hot and Black to transformer Common. If you reverse them you won't be able to wire the turnouts for automatic non-derailing operation.

I also strongly suggest using a separate transformer for DZ1000 motor power. Phase this transformer with the track power transformer, and connect the two transformer's Common terminals, to allow automatic non-derailing operation. 

Thanks Guys,

What transformers do you recommend?

I use a Lionel ZW for the switches and a MTH Z4000 for the track.

Steve is a great guy and makes a fine product!

Steve, send me a check now! :-)

I use a Lionel Accessory Transformer 6-32923.  It will put out 1.8 amps with adjustable voltage up to 18v.  I set mine for about 14 volts.  Works great and can be found for ~$39 or so.

Dan

Mounting the buttons on my control panels worked great.  The wiring is done with terminal strips and wirenuts inside the box.  The front panel is the box cover.  The control buttons are secured with double sticky back foam tape (carpet tape).

Now that’s what I'm talking about!

Susan,

That is a very nice control panel.

Rudy,

All of the folks above gave great advise.

Here are a few pictures of my control panel and the Z 1000 controllers.

I ran a bus line connected to the B or C terminal of a ZW  to all points of the layout for powering the Z1000 switch machines. Terminal strips are connected to the bus in areas where there is a cluster of switch machines. As mentioned above the switch machine red wire will go to the terminal strip / bus.

For making the run back to the control panel for the other two wires I found that using 8 conductor irrigation control cable with 18 AWG solid wires worked the best. Each cable run can be used to wire 4 switches to the controllers in the panel.  Just make sure the green wire on the switch machine ends up connected to the green wire in the controller, and the yellow wire on the switch machine ends up connected to the white wire on the controller. The black wire on the controller goes to your common ground. Since I had over 50 switches to wire I placed terminal strips in the control panel for connecting the black wire from each controller to ground.  The terminal strips in the pictures with the white wires are the ground terminals.

The Control Panel

Inside the panel.

I used white wire for the color of all comon ground wires on my layout. The lights on the control panel are also grounded to the comon terminals with the white wires.

I hope this helped.

Richard

Richard..

Very helpful.

Thank you for your time.

Now to look it  all over, everyone is giving some nice input.

Thanks

Rudy  

The "Y" module, for the Fort Pitt Highrailer's Turntable has (2) Ross 3way switches. (4) corresponding Ross 101 switches for cross overs.  (2) Ross 101 for TT "Y" access and a Ross "Y" switch.  (14) push buttons, (7 pairs), and TMCC control of (6) switches with a Lionel SC-2.  Automatic non-derail was also wired as part of the project. Click on the underlined phrase to access the picture file.

A video of how it works.

Hello Richard,

Can you tell me what the two rotary switches at the left side of your control panel are for?

Thank you,

Rudy  

Mike CT,

Very nice engine terminal modules. I wish we had your modules on Casey Jones layout How many modules does it take to build this portion fo the Fort Pitt High Railers modular layout. How big are the modules?

Rudy, the two rotary switches are for selecting the power to each one of the 17 track around the turn table.

Richard

Since we are talking Ross switches, does any find it  necessary to use relays to control power to the rails on #6 or #8 turnout? I get mixed results with relay or no relay. 

Nice set up good idea with peg board.

Thanks,

Rudy