I offered to make up some NCE Cab bus cables for Toto's Luib Bridge layout. The NCE cab bus uses 4 wire straight through RJ11 cables, not the cross-over type often supplied as phone extensions That is Pin 1 to Pin 1, Pin 2 to Pin 2 ....... Pin 4 to Pin 4 not Pin 1 to Pin 4, Pin 2 to Pin 3 ....... These are really easy to make up, and very cheap to do and take a couple of mins to make. Below are some the plug types used Left to right RJ12 (6P6C), RJ11 (6P4C) & RJ22 (4P4C) For the NCE Cab bus cable I will be using the RJ11 (middle plug). Tools I used are Crimping Tool - I have two, a Maplin 8P/6P (used for 8P RJ45 - ethernet cables & 6P RJ11 & RJ12 cables) and a Handy 6P/4P (used for 6P RJ11 & RJ12cables and 4P RJ22 cables - phone handsets and MERG Canbus cables). Both these tools have a stripper and cutter built in. Cable tester Materials RJ11 plugs - approx £3 for 50 from the bay 4 wire flat telephone extention cable - I bought this from Maplin as part of a 30m phone extention kit, as it worked out cheaper than buying the cable by the meter Step 1 strip off the outer sheath - the stripper is set not to cut through the wires. Insert the cable in to the plug So that sheath is in the plug - if the sheath can go in, use the cutter to trim the wire length down. Insert the wire + plug into the crimper and close the crimper, do it a couple of times to make sure the pins pushed in. Now repeat for the other end - however this time when you insert the cable for a straight through cable you need to turn the cable over. The cable has a flat side (with a line down the middle) and a curved side and thats it. And to prove it, insert the cable in to the tester For RJ45 (8P8C) pins 1 to 8 are used, for RJ12 (6P6C) pins 1 to 6 are used, and for RJ11 pins 2 to 5 are used. If everything is ok (in our case) pins 2 to 5 will illuminate on both displays consecutively, if any don't light up or not in the correct order then the connection is not crimped correctly (not lighting up) or one end not in the correct order - wires crossed or plug on upside down. Four cables made up for Toto in less than 15 min (including taking pics). Paul
