The James River Branch Z Scale Model Railroad: Control Panel

Control Panel

The control panel for the James River Branch was a curious thing. First, I'd not planned for it to be located in any particular spot. Then again, it didn't have much to control. It was almost an afterthought.

At the outset, I had a vague notion to place it in the front on the town side of the layout. My reasoning was that, since the town had the most things to control, it would make the most sense in terms of wiring. But as this area began coming together, it wound up a little smaller and more cramped than I'd imagined it might be. And with the wiring access channel connecting the layout ends, it pretty much didn't matter where the panel was located.

The control panel will be installed in the left rear corner of the layout.

Ultimately it wound up on the "rural" end of the layout, toward the back. This afforded the largest and least congested possible space. The panel itself was made from a scrap of black sheet styrene—the same material I'd used for the roadbed.

As the panel design started coming together, it became a bit more complex than I'd expected, but not as complex as it could have been had I provided controls for each individual lighted/animated feature on the layout—as it was, I had no way of predicting the final tally of these items. So, I arbitrarily installed eight switches to control groups of related items based on the power sources required (1.5, 3, 4.5 or 6 volts), plus two for the train: an on/off/direction control and a slow/slower speed selector.

The switches were all left over from a panel that used to be on my White River and Northern N scale layout. I finished the panel with a legend printed on self-adhesive stock that I laminated with heavy clear film for durability.

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