So last night I decided to spend an hour or two building the housing for our under layout lighting.

Because the underneath portion of the layout will be used for storage and eventually some staging I wanted to install some LED's under it so that as I'm wiring and installing the signals & detection its already in and running.

I was given a Quantum sound decoder because it would not respond to the 4 digit address.  I installed it in an Atlas FP7 and it worked fine for some time using address 905, the loco number.  Then it stopped responding.  I use te reset code to reset to factory specs and it responded to 0003 as expected.  I reset the number to 905 and it did not work (Sound on, Headlight on, but not controlled by F0 and the loco would not run, no functions working.)  Reset to 003 and all worked.  Reset to 906, and now everything worked as expected, as has continued to work so far

I have 2 electrical questions. Can you splice into the main bus wires using Scotchlok 562 connectors to run another bus to an area too far away for feeder wires (4') and then splice back into the original bus? Also, on a swing out gate I just put up I want to stop track power about 1 1/2' on both sides of the gate when it's open so nothing will run off the table if the gates isn't closed. I've read articles on the wiring but nothing too clearly to understand.

I am looking at setting up operations at a creamery which uses ice reefers to ship products. My question is how do you incorporate the icing procedure into the operations. Do you load product first then move the reefer to the icing platform or ice first, then product? Since I can't see the engine setting around waiting for the ice or product to be loaded, is it a drop off and pickup later and if so how much time between moves should you allow?