MTH Switches - Need Advice

[M1Tanker]

I am finally back to working on my layout (baseball coaching season and Army things have ceased with sucking my time dry). I have switches at various places but as we all know the wires are not long to reach from the controllers to the switches actual. So how do you gentlemen who have done more of this reccomend for me to approach the wiring?

thanking you all in advance,

Smitty

[willpick]

Smitty, I don't have any experience with MTH switches , but in general, what I used to do with the Lionel switches was to use a multi wire flat cable that matched the wire of the controllers. I would cut the controller cables in half, splice/solder the cable in so that the length was enough to get to the switch. The cable should be available at your local shop, if it isn't, i'm sure that it's available online from several vendors. I think the MTH switch use 3 wires, so all you need to do is splice in the multiwire cable---
I have Atlas O track & switches, and I don't use the wire they provide, as it's imho,it's too small a wire gauge for long runs.
HTH!.

[jefelectric]

I use MTH switches on my original layout. Here is how I did it. I mounted the switch controllers on my control panel & ran wth wires that come with the controllers to terminal strips mounted on the bottom of the layout directly behind the panel. From that point I used four conductor, 18 gauge cable, to run to the switches as needed. You can also use one controller to operate two switches, such as at a crossover when you always want both switches to move together. I use a separate power supply to operate the switches, not track power. Actually they are powered by an old Lionel 1033. Has been working great for about 6 years.

One word of caution. Don't depend on the switches to carry your track power through the switch. Mine worked fine for a while but if you have a train that draws a lot of current it will fail. The track power is carried through the swithc with a printed circuit trace which will not stand a lot of current, such as a multi unit diesel or a passenger train with a lot of lighted cars.

Hope this helps.

[M1Tanker]

Thanks guys on the anniversary of Custer at the Little BigHorn!