Hi Bill et All,
I am not sure, but officially I don't really think it matters whether you
use bare wire or not for the main feeds. 14 gauge or larger is better. The
larger the gauge, the lesser the resistance and voltage drop over long runs.
On my modules, I used vertical beams running lengthwise in the middle, both
for strength and for electric isolation. I used solid core copper wire
which I stripped the insulation off. I then screwed in the bare wires on
both sides of the beams so as to make sure they were totally isolated
physically and electrically. Then it was easy to solder on the track
feeders from the mains. This is especially helpful if you have a lot of
turnouts that you are soldering the feeders to. I reasoned that had I left
the insulation on, then the tenuous task (note the alliteration) of
stripping the wire at a multitude of points would have been too arduous.
My brewery modules are basically a straightened John Allen Timesaver. I
found that it was necessary to connect every section of track to the main
feeds and not rely on rail joiners to conduct the current, especially after
I painted the sides of the rails. I truly believe that hard wiring is the
way to go.
The proof was in the pudding last evening when I had 3 non-DCC HOer's over
to try out DCC. These fellows are really nice people that were curious
about DCC. They all have very complete HO layouts that operate well. Two
of their layouts are extremely sophisticated electrically and have a
dispatcher to control all power routing. One fellow is a computer
electronics teacher and the other an electrical engineer. Other than the
positive comments about the locomotives which I greatly appreciated, the
most often heard comment was about how there was no problem with track
pickup. There was no stalling at all in any areas.
They also liked the fact that they could all three operate their locomotives
at the same time and were freed from block control. One of them is looking
into being able to have both DCC and regular DC on his layout now.
As for S scale converts, I would say it would not be practical for the ones
with the large layouts. I am a great fan of "if it ain't broke, don't fix
it" and those layouts are really great already. But...you never know.
These are just some thoughts on the matter.
cheers,
Andy Malette
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