Getting Power to Sidings on a 00 Gauge Track

Sidings can be tricky. They're a great place to store rolling stock when it's not in use (i.e. in a hidden fiddle yard) and can also make excellent scenic features when you just want to show off your collection of weathered coal trucks.

However, they're often out on a limb slightly, fed by a single track, probably via an insulated set of points. This can mean that they either don't get power, or it's not reliable. 

The sidings may even be part of a bolt-on fiddle yard that is constantly being removed for storage.

None of these situations are ideal, but there are a few ways to make sure that, if needed, power gets to the sidings reliably.

Sidings That Don't Need Power

There's a line of thought that says that sidings are for storage, and as such don't actually need power at all.

As long as you can back the train in, drop the carriages, trucks or wagons, and roll off again, sidings don't need power in their entirety. They do, however, need a powered section for the locomotive. Consider the following track section with hidden sidings:

In this example, the Hidden Sidings don't need power, and the transition could even be disguised as a bridge (it's currently just behind a shed!)

Getting Power to Sidings

It could be useful, though, to power the sidings, even if they are part of a removable fiddle yard, but relying on the track to power itself (even via fishplates) is probably not a good option.

Clearly soldering a drop-wire (or dropper) from the on-scene to off-scene track is also not a good idea, if the fiddle yard (or hidden sidings) are to be removable.

The answer is to source the power directly (i.e. not from the track) and use a 3.5mm jack connector or banana clips to deliver the power to the siding. For those not wanting to use solder, banana clips don't need to be soldered to the wires, whereas a 3.5mm plug and jack do need to be soldered.

On the other end of the wires, there are also solder and solder-free solutions. In both cases the webbing between the track and the chair needs to be removed to expose the track.

Holes can then be drilled under the track, and the wire fed through, and soldered to the exposed track.

For non-solder users, a small conducting screw should be used - the wire can be wound round the screw (which is screwed into the hole) and the head of the screw pushed up against the track, thereby providing it with power.

In this way, you can get power to sidings, hidden or not, without worrying about lining up the tracks or risking bending the connecting fishplates.