Work begins (more updates-WIRING!)

[waaytoomuchintothis]

That's the way to do it when you have access to the underside. Remember, this is on top of another track.

They make wire ties now that have a loop for a screw on the buckle end. Just gather the wires up, and screw the wire tie to the underside of the track with a short wood screw, and you will never catch wires on things when you store stuff under the track. I did it with the wires under the old track, and was glad I did it many times.

[SpeedyNH]

i've got a 'fox and hound' to trace wiring with for when i wired my house (i have over a mile of cat5 in there and a lot of other types as well). think i got mine from mcm electronics and it didn't cost me a nominal egg, so to speak. it's pretty useful. i'd offer a loan, but by the time we fedex'd it back and forth, you could probably come close to buying yourown.
for tracking down 115V stuff, i also have a signal injector and receiver that also puts a tone on the line, can't remember the name but they were el-cheapos and it vaguely does the job. problem with that one is, when wires are close together (as they always are with house wiring, for at least part of the way), the signal couples across to other lines and you can't always tell which is which at the end in question because of the lack of isolation due to the low frequency it uses and the unbalanced type of signal.
otherwise, when i wire tracks, if i don't mark 'em in advance by lane color, i just separate the feeds at the source and use either a power supply and a meter or just a long cliplead.
just so you know, but all that probably doesn't help because you're done by now1
speedy

[waaytoomuchintothis]

My wife just asked me what I was chuckling at, Speedy.

I'll look at mcm. I've just about got this on the run, but I want to have the tool in my arsenal. Thanks. Is it going to be with the Cat5 cable supplies?

EDIT/UPDATE-- Speedy, I just got back from MCM, and I have confirmed that I don't know sh*t about electrics. I think I got the tool I meant to get, but I could have bought the wrong thing. I may see a space shuttle delivered and my bank account vaporized, I just can't tell. I'll let you know if I am the new proprietor of NASA.

[SpeedyNH]

glad to be of service! :D

ok i tracked mine down. i got 'em from triplett.com (the guys who make the good old analog VOM's, not mcm after all. sorry about the misdirection):

F-3245K-BLK
triplett.com
Tester, Wire Tracing, Fur Fox & Hound 2 w/case Fox: 3380 lo/hi/warble tone gen., C.O. or batt. pwr., will not capture phone lines, ind. line pol., supplies buttie’s “talk power”, +3dBm 600Ω, 35mA max, recharges NiCd 9V’s (9mA), w/ ally clips& 2-cond. RJ-11 plug. Hound: 3236 port. inductive tracer, w/ hi-gain, hi imp. ampl., for line-line or line-gnd use, 9V batt., LED ind., spkr.
06/04 58.00

F-3243-BLK
triplett.com
Tester, Wire Tracing, Lan Fox Tone Generator: Gen’s lo/hi warble tones for cable tracing. 8-cond. rj-45 jack w/ BNC adapt./ gnd. clip. flashing LED ‘on’ ind. +/- 8.0V sq. wave, 4KΩ series ILIM, will withstand 56V (400Ω series) and 175Vpk. (100Ω series) for 100ms, 120Vrms 50/60Hz, line cross resistant (std telco sig’s) 06/04 20.00

man, i guess you can't cut and paste word table cells into this forum reply window without losing the formatting! sorry about that. i did break it up with some carriage returns but the description doesn't do it justice.
i can't seem to find find the ac line tester which is an entirely different animal. but like i said, injecting a tone on the line doesn't work very well because of the coupling between the adjacent wires issue (i'm an rf guy so i recognize that immediately and this one is tough toget around). i prefer the tried-and-true Ohmmeter or power supply-and-Voltmeter method because you get a lot better isolation when you actually draw current down the wire.
hope i haven't led you astray, my friend.

but i really hope you get your space shuttle! i've seriously wanted one of those after seeing 'em and even knowing a guy who works(ed) on 'em. although i'm not sure what i'd know what to do with it myself without a way to launch it! (i would have used the scratching head smiley here but i couldn't find it.)

anyway, enjoy mcm- they're a great electronics resource! (like i tell my w1fe, "at least i'm good for Something!")
(guess we may have lost all the others on this topic zeroing in on this. we could always pm. do that if you care and i'll give you my cell so we don't have to fod the forum so badly.) (thanks, Harry.)
speed

[waaytoomuchintothis]

[SpeedyNH]

nice.
a speedy conclusion (so to speak) ?
i also put a little 5A panel breaker in my drivers' panels.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Gig problem with the track this weekend. Actually, a real defeat. The reversing switches are going to have to be left off. The acrylic panels are so brittle they crack when the switch is thrown, which I could overcome with a thin plywood panel underneath for support, but I also found that there isn't enough room for the switch wiring without tearing up a lot of good stuff. I'm going to put a power indicator lamp in the hole I drilled for the switches, and move on. Its very disappointing. The choice is to weaken the already weakened old track, or do without the switches. I chose. I'll wire up some indestructible cars to run backwards just for fun sometimes. I always keep a few around for guests and kids to run, and since this track has one more lane, I'll be adding one to each set anyway. Tomorrow its back to work.