Labels and marking is good

Being that I work for a phone and internet company with fiber and Ethernet strung all over the place, I am a firm believer in labels and color coding where possible. 

Are the zip tie colors being used as a marker, or was that just how they came out of the bag? 

"Are the zip tie colors being

Everything is color coded, evan the zip ties match.  Just the Pinks for Nortt/Red - Yellow/White south. etc.  But used just to keep the bundles together.  Not so much to say,  hey these  are the red or white wires.

Wiring

I thought my wiring was interesting.

Looks like there's a theme here...

Show Off Your Wiring!

(just a note:  my cat would have fun with those feeders dangling under the plywood!)

Label

Working in the technology industry I have found labeling cable serves you well and would recommend doing the same on your layout. 

Joe

What you talkin bout willis? 

What you talkin bout willis?  It is track feeders to a Bus block.  Then from a Bus Block to the the Bus Wires that runs to a NCE DCC system. 

How much labeling is needed? 

It is Red and White for north and south rails. Labeling is technically in the color of the wire. 

This is not like I'm installing a production tool at intel running cables from the Sub Fab to the Fab Floor etc.  

Re: Labels - Colorblind

All depends are you wiring for yourself or for others to help, if one of your helpers is colorblind, labels sure would help. Also labels mean you don't have to remember red is north rail and white is south rail.

And you mention pink cable ties, but they sure look orange in the picture.

Since you color coded, which is great, why didn't you use white cable ties for white wire and red cable ties for red wire?

And you mention pink cable

I was given a container full of 100's of  small fluorescent zip ties.  I will not use them on my pinball machine restorations or on my race car or off road car.  Why let them go to waste?  I think they are

Messy wiring

I don't know how people can take the spaghetti wiring practices to their layouts w/o any labeling and think it will pass some type of muster test. So much wiring I see here on MRH is absolutely appalling, this isn't that bad compared to so many others. There is at least an idea of color coding, that beats about forty percent of the rest out there.

I agree with AzBaja

Sometimes we can really over complicate things that don't need to be.  Labeling is important when confusion could reign.  Red and white and that's it doesn't call for labeling by any stretch.  I did Black and Red for my feeders and buss wires and I always think"black is back" so I always know which rail to attach the feeders to.  Don't overthink simple concepts.  

Craig

Zip Ties & Labels

Lucky you to be given zip ties, makes sense not to waste things, was just curious how you chose those colors.

I would use Yard Track 1 and possibly N and S for the North and South Rails, so the label could be

N Yard Track 1 S, beside the feeders.

@Craig, no one every said you had to label things, just labels can help, especially if you have multiple people working on the same layout and even more important if a person is colorblind. In a club setting (which is where I come from) you have to worry about things that the lone wolf doesn't have too.

As long as it works

Your wiring looks like spaghetti but who cares its your railroad, have fun chasing down a short.

Bill

This is not much better...But he has a Sharpie

This is not much better is it?  But has mastered the use of a Sharpie,  Sucks when you need to line out your mistakes. Seems to be a lot of them.

Yeah

Certain things require labeling, but that's more for accessories, in my opinion.  The colour code works.  My wiring, by comparison, would apparently be called atrocious, but I can chase down a short in less than 2 minutes, as I'm sure AzBaja can, too.  White and black wires with "black to the back" as others have said with the wires screwed into terminal blocks that go to the buss.  I can isolate sections with one turn of a screwdriver, then when the section is isolated, I can isolate the wires to that section with another turn of the screwdriver.  It isn't that hard.

I just started to redo my wiring

I'm going from basically two buss lines to four or five, depending on how you count it. And I wasn't as lucky as AzBaja when it came to colored zip ties - I looked for them but only found about 3 colors. So I'll be tagging busses (1 through 4+1) with colored electrical tape, of which I have a lot.

When it comes to labels, I'll put them in where I think there might be some confusion about which feeders are going where - I have a section where two parallel tracks will be on separate busses.

I think possibly the loveliest job of wiring I have ever seen was on Bruce Chubb's Sunset Valley, Oregon layout, which I had the privilege to visit during the 2012 NMRA convention (but I don't see a lot of labels - I'm fairly sure it is well documented though):

@Jeff - any recommendations re: wiring devices?

As a man in the Telco biz, is there any particular hardware you like to borrow...

(My dad was an EE for RCA... lots of obsolete equipment was 'acquired' for his hobby use, and I can assure you, it was a lifetime supply!  Glass resistors, anyone?)

"I'm going from basically two

  Why do you need so many with DCC?  I have one buss roughly following the mainline around the room. It's divided up into 5 power districts due to length from booster and command recommendations. My single buss could easily handle more trackage if I had more so I can't see where you'd need 4 or 5 ? (unless you are talking about signal wiring and accessory power feeders?) ....DaveB  

Busses

It sounds like you have a single buss with serial breakers in it.  The way you describe it sounds like if you short out the first block/breaker away from the command station it would cut off power to the entire layout.  I may have misunderstood you.

I have the layout divided into seven blocks, each block has a bus that runs back to the command station and each block has its own breaker and power cut out switch.  That way a short only affects the block in which it occurs, the rest of the layout keeps running.  Plus I can cut the power to any one block to troubleshoot shorts and perform work

I like keeping my boosters and breakers centralized

I'm trying to organize (and make sorta pretty) all the expensive electronics. I've recently become aware that I'm really pushing the capabilities of a 3-5A booster with the number of locomotives I've got on my layout.

So I'm breaking the layout down into smaller chunks.

As for borrowing stuff from work, while I have permission to do so, there really isn't anything I need. The most likely thing would be 22-24ga jumper wire for drops, but the colors are wrong. I'm not going to bother with Scotchloks (the gel filled kind) for my layout - I'm going with the Wago lever nuts for connecting drops.

"So I'm breaking the layout

So it's a matter of semantics. One buss per area but broken into power districts? That makes more sense than 4-5 busses :> ) ......DaveB 

1-2 busses per booster

What I'm doing is adding at least one booster to my mix, and a couple circuit breakers. I also have an auto-reversing section.