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Garden railway mark III: wiring

Last modified: Fri Aug 3 08:50:31 2007

This garden railway, although small by typical standards, is still large and complex enough to present a wiring problem. Here are some of my experiences in this area.

Transformers, etc., protected from the weather in outdoor waterproof junction boxes

• Unless you bury your wiring a long way down (more than a few inches), it will tend to come to the surface as the soil moves. I've found it quite difficult to prevent this happening. Even piling heaps of gravel on top of the buried wiring doesn't entirely prevent this. Since you can't keep your wiring absolutely underground, it makes sense to use black or brown cable because it is less obvious than, say, white. Unfortunately, electrical cable is usually white, and it's necessary to shop around a bit to get any other colour. You'd think that a company like LGB would make unobtrusive cable, but their cable is red and blue, which is as unsightly as it can possibly be
• I don't much like the idea of using mains-voltage cabling in the garden. I particularly don't like the idea of having a bunch of cables, some of which are mains-voltage and some of which are low-voltage. Shock-protection devices are very good these days, but I'd rather not have to rely on them routinely. Low-voltage versions are available for more-or-less anything you'd want to run in the garden
• Railway speed controllers, transformers, pump controllers, etc., are usually not very waterproof. This is rather surprising, given the intended application, but it's true. So ideally it's best to house them indoors. But if your railway is too far from the nearest building for this to be practical, what you you going to do? The best idea I've been able to come up with is to house them in large, waterproof electrical junction boxes (see photo). These are available from electrical suppliers, for about £20 and are designed to be used outdoors. So far this strategy seems to be working

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