Using The NCE Illuminator With T-trak

The more I work with DCC and T-trak, the more I think that if I were in my teens or early 20s now and intended to continue with the model railroad hobby as an adult, I'd very seriously consider T-trak. The modules are compact and easy to move, so that if you move out of the family home and into your own place, you aren't forced to demolish the old layout (or leave it up just for holiday visits). As you move around early in a career and start a family, you're also in a position to move it either to a new home or a different place in the home to make room for new members of the family -- or even put it all into storage until you can bring it out again.

One thing I like about how well it works with DCC is that all the wiring for switch machines, track power, and layout lighting goes through a single power bus, and with T-trak, this means it all goes through the Unitrack connectors that link each module both mechanically and electrically. On a small layout, no separate wiring is needed between modules. On a large temporary show layout, there are supplementary heavy-gauge buses that connect every few modules.

I haven't seen anything on how to install lighting in a T-trak module with NCE Illuminators. This may be because of the way I've been doing T-trak, using the hollow space beneath the modules to install electrical equipment. Not everyone does this, and not everyone understands how powerful a feature this is in the T-trak architecture -- for instance, the Model Railroader Video Plus T-Trak project simply filled the modules with styrofoam. They assumed a module would just have simple tracks on it that did nothing but carry track power.

The NCE Illuminator is a DCC lighting decoder that is compatible with the Woodland Scenics Just Plug system, and in fact, as I've posted here, it's even a little more cost-effective than the Woodland Scenics version. This post will give an example of how I use it with T-trak. Here is an example of an N scale house that I built maybe 35 years ago from a kit -- maybe it was Model Power.

When I assembled it, I did what I almost always do, spray the interior walls black to prevent light bleedthrough if I ever want to light it. You can also see that I determined exactly where I would locate it and measured the interior so that I could glue pieces of stripwood (these were actually from fireplace matches) onto the base that would allow a press fit in place. I also drilled a 3/8" hole to feed the Just Plug plug through.

The NCE Illuminator is installed beneath the T-trak module. I also glue pages from the product documentation on the bottom of the module so I have them there for reference whenever I need to work on the module's electronics.

The illuminator is on the left. A Digitrax DS52 stationary decoder for the Kato switch machines is on the right. Every one of my modules has a terminal strip as shown that makes it easy to add other features like these. I added a Woodland Scenics Just Plug warm white stick-on LED to the inside of the house:

I connected the module to the main T-trak module with the DCC power connection via a jumper that lets me power individual modules without connecting them physically via Unitrack joiners. This jumper uses the terminal strips on the bottom of every module.

With the power connected, the LED on the Illuminator lights up:

I then set the house in place on top of the module and fed the plug wiring through the hole, inserting the plug into the Illuminator socket:

The LED on the Illuminator goes out when the plug is inserted, while the LED in the house goes on. Here's the final result:

This is probably a little bright. The Illuminator allows brightness to be adjusted via a CV, which I will probably do. The Illuminator has a total of three ports, so I can add another two LEDs to this module very easily.