Does it make a differance-Red Black hookuip

[woodone]

Was wondering? does it really make any difference has to whether you use the red to the left rail and the black to the right rail?
I stay with color codes has much has possible but in some N scale installs using the black to the right rail and red to the left rail might straighten out some wiring.

Any negative things about doing this?

[Doug G.]

It doesn't matter, per se, but you want to stay consistent on any given layout.

Can you give us an example as to what you want to do?

Doug

[woodone]

I am not referring to layout wiring.
The question is about the wiring in an locomotive DCC install.
There are times when you must mount the decoder one way or the other as to top- bottom. this will switch the side the wires exit the decoder.
Sometime just having to cross a wire or two will cause some interference with the install.
I have in the past resorted to removing the heat shrink and replace the original insulated wires with magnet wire to save some space.
I work about 90% of the time on N scale installs.
Be doing this for over 20 years and about 3000 installs ( I really don't know the number)   And every time I fire a new install up,I get butterflys!

[RBrodzinsky]

Jerry, do you mean for a decoder install? In that case, no, not at all since he signal is modified AC. The signal gets read either way, and all the outputs from the decoder are driven after the voltage has been rectified.

[woodone]

Yes, Rick. That was the question. I have always put red to right ,
black to left.
Just was not sure if it mattered-  like for consisting and the likes.

[peteski]

You can use whatever colors you want, but following the standard makes things easier while installing and troubleshooting.  Why do you think the manufacturers follow the defined standard?  Because all those colors look pretty? 

[lyled1117]

The red/blk orientation makes a difference when the loco gets used on a DC layout. On DCC it's usually a don't care situation, but under DC operation it does matter. The red is suppose to correspond to the orange wire, the black to the gray. Under DC, flip the ORG/GRY or the RED/BLK and the loco travels wrong direction for DC practices. And I do agree with Peteski ....  why not do it right from the start. 

Lyle

[jagged ben]

You can use whatever colors you want, but following the standard makes things easier while installing and troubleshooting.  Why do you think the manufacturers follow the defined standard?  Because all those colors look pretty? 

I'm not sure if you're just being snarky or if you really missed the point.

I'll put it this way...
Why does the standard have a black wire and a red wire?  Why not two blacks?  Or two reds?

EDIT:  And Lyle answered the question...

[peteski]

I'm not sure if you're just being snarky or if you really missed the point.

Yes, here was some snarkiness in that comment. 

The polarity might also make difference in some of the automatic braking feature used by certain DCC systems (where the DCC signal is made asymmetrical in a block to signal when breaking is requested). Not sure though.  But DC operation is  really the main purpose of color-coding the wires. Polarity matters.