TastyBake ISL

[Southern Tuxedo]

Mike,

That's too funny.

Hum...What...???... SWMBO is calling, gotta go....Later dude.

Mark

Just kidding, but seriously there are just not enough hours in the day.

[Southern Tuxedo]

TastyBake is finally off the floor!


   

So far I am real happy with the track plan but I need to wire it temporally so I can run trains to see how it will switch in the real world. This leads to a question as to feeder wire gauge. Lance Mindheim recommends 18ga. wire for the feeders, but these looks enormous when places next to the code 70 Micro Engineering rail. Can I get away with thinner wire especially since I am considering a drop for every piece of rail as reliability is paramount to me?

Layout will be DCC if that makes a difference.

Thanks for looking.
Mark

[jwb]

As I understand it (though I'm not on DCC, so take this for what it's worth), the heavy-gauge bus wire is because DCC allows you to run a potentially larger number of locos than DC with block control. If you think about it, a dozen guys could run locos with DCC on an ISL, assuming you had enough guys, enough controllers, and enough locos, although the locos couldn't move very far. (They'd still be drawing current anyhow, though, even if they were standing still.) This could put a heavy load on traditional DC style layout wiring, which would explain Mindheim's recommendation.

But normally you're just going to run one loco, or at most two, on a small ISL anyhow. Ordinary Atlas layout hookup wire is 20 gauge, and unless you're planning to host a large group on a fairly large layout, I would think that's enough. In addition, you can run even smaller wire as feeders from individual rail sections to the main bus. I used to do this, but the finer wire breaks or comes unsoldered more easily, and I wound up deciding the need for reliability outweighed the advantage in appearance.

[fwwrmodeler]

Mark,

On mine I used 22 gauge soldered to basically every piece of track, did not want to count on rail joiners. These were tied into 18 gauge feeders with suitcase connector that were tied into my 12 gauge buss.

[Southern Tuxedo]

jwb,

Thanks for the explanation of how feeder and buss wires work with DCC. It really helped me to understand how this all works. I doubt that there will ever be more than one loco operating at a time, but if I had a guest perhaps two would be possible. I can’t see any more than that ever even with future expansion.

Mark

[Southern Tuxedo]

Mark,

On mine I used 22 gauge soldered to basically every piece of track, did not want to count on rail joiners. These were tied into 18 gauge feeders with suitcase connector that were tied into my 12 gauge buss.

Wayne,

This is exactly what I was thinking, except I thought I would use 20ga. on the feeders and solder that directly to the 14ga. buss.

Mark

[fwwrmodeler]

Mark,

I'll get some photos tonight if I'm confusing anybody. I use about 6 inch long 22 gauge because that is what i found at Fry's when i went to get wire, 20 would be fine. The smaller the better for us people who are not as good at soldering . Then I use approx 16-18 gauge to tie in all the feeders together then attach to the main buss. There may be better ways but this has worked for me, was the way I was introduced to approx 15 years ago by some guys setting up a large DCC layout in CA i was working with. We were using Digitrax and nobody at that time had done a club size setup before. Digitrax suggested every other piece of flex but you depend on rail joiners. After a few problems areas we said screw it and soldered every piece of track and most of the problems went away.

[Southern Tuxedo]

Wayne,

If it is not too much trouble photos are always appreciated, although I have a pretty good idea of what you are talking about.

Mark

[Russ Bellinis]

You need the 18 ga wire for the main buss wires because of the relatively high resistance of the wire over fairly long runs. You can use the 20-22 ga wire for drops as long as you keep the length of the drops short enough to minimize voltage drop due to resistance. 6 inches should be fine.