I use bare bus wires and keep them separated with blocks of wood. I drill two holes in each block, and run the wires through them. The wood blocks are glued to the layout using yellow carpenter's glue only, and they are in there for life. Should I need to redo things, a swift blow of a hammer will loosen them up for repositioning.
I have one bus for DCC and one for 12-volt accessories. I should have created another bus for DCC for stationary decoders (powered via a separate district so that I can still control a turnout when an engine crosses over a turnout that is thrown against it; lesson learned!). You can clearly see the two separate busses in the first couple of photos on this page: http://pmrr.org/Layouts/Chartiers/CanonsburgTrack.htm It was really easy to then connect the feeder wires (which ARE insulated) to the nearest section of the DCC bus and solder it. The same is going to be true when I install structures with lights, animation, and other add-on features later; they just get soldered to the nearest accessories bus. The other end of the accessories bus is connected to a 12-volt wall-wart, but can be switched to another voltage one if future circumstances so dictate. I implemented the same "naked" bus wire approach in the Houston S Gaugers wye modules, which worked fine last October. The gauge of wire issue depends on the length of the wire used. Ideally, you'd put the DCC system in the middle of the layout, so that each branch has about equal length and has an equal voltage drop near its end. If you put the system near one end of the layout, then the other end of the layout may experience some voltage drop (engines run slower on that part of the layout), depending on the size wire used. Of course, this depends on the size of the layout as well. On a small switching layout like mine, this won't matter. But on a large layout it might. Also, it is my understanding that a very long run may not cause shorts triggered near the end of the long run to be detected by the DCC system, which may, then, not shut down. I believe this has to do with the voltage drop of the wire. I think the Digitrax manual talks about that in the section on the "quarter test" to test shorting the layout. (just some extra, unsolicited advice :-) ) Enjoy, - Peter. On 01/25/2011 5:09 am, Bill Lane wrote: > Jim, > > I am using bare wires for the power buss because you can easily tie into it > **anywhere** with the feeder drops. I am soldering the drops to the buss > wires. Finding 14 ga bare wire is not easy now but I have found enough for > me to get the job done. All I have to do is buy it! -- Peter Vanvliet ([email protected], or [email protected]) Houston, Texas "It is easy to give up; anyone can do that..." http://pmrr.org/ (my model railroad - RSS feed <http://pmrr.org/rss.xml>) http://fourthray.com/ (my company) http://houstonsgaugers.org/ (model railroad club) -- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
