Thanks for the help, Bob. Really appreciate it. Time for me to go "spelunking" under the table!
I would start by beefing up those returns. You need at least 14 AWG for safety; so I would replace any wire smaller than that by 10 AWG. If you have outside-rail gaps at the block boundaries, close them. Then look for opportunities to connect the outside rails of any tracks to the outside rails of any other tracks that come close to them. If all that fails to subdue the voltage drops, then I'm afraid that all that is left is to replace the center-rail 14 AWG by 10 AWG.
Don't worry about the difficulty of connecting 10 AWG to the track. Just use a couple of inches of whatever you can to get below the table. Then connect that "tap" to the 10 AWG, perhaps with a wire nut.
Bob Nelson
I should also mention that there are two plug connections and two toggles along each wire. Guess those could be making up the difference between the 40 feet of wire I have and the 60 you are estimating. I hit the plug connections with DeoxIT; didn't seem to help much.
Bob, you are just the "someone" I was hoping for
Adding up the distances, track to switches, and switches to ZW, we are looking at something like 40 feet of wire on the "hot" side of the circuit. Never really thought about it until you asked, but that is a lot. About twice what it used to be on some of the blocks, an even bigger increase on others. Still not quite the 60 you estimate, though. I should mention that there are two plug connections and two toggles along each wire. Guess those could be making up the difference. I hit the plug connections with DeoxIT; didn't seem to help much.
I do believe all the outside rails on the layout are connected to each other, but you have me wondering how that network is connected to the ZW. I will have to look again to see how many jumpers there are; I think some of the ground wiring may be only 16 AWG.
No accessories, so I can't make any headway there.
So it looks like there may be a lot of (re) wiring in my future. Is there another way? Or would it be a case of the cure being worse than the disease?
Thanks!
You say "a lot of additional wire". Can you estimate how much between track and switches and between switches and ZW? Fourteen AWG has a resistance of 2.5 milliohms per foot, so 5 milliohms per foot of circuit. This is 25 millivolts per foot for a train drawing 5 amperes. So the sort of drops you're seeing would be reasonable for a total distance of about 60 feet.
If distance is the only problem, going to 10 AWG, which has a resistance of 1 milliohm per foot, should get rid of most of it.
You might look into interconnecting outside rails between tracks wherever possible on your layout. Sharing multiple return paths among tracks like that may reduce the drop substantially on one side of the circuit. Another trick is to power accessories that share the track return out of phase with the track voltage. Their return currents then cancel some of the train currents.
As for soldering rail joints, Lee, I started doing it just so track would be easy to remove and replace, as an alternative to track pins. Track assembled with track pins often requires you to uproot much more track than you are actually working on, just to get the slack to take the sections apart. Good electrical conduction is a by-product as far as I am concerned.
phillyreading, thanks for the reply. The layout is divided into blocks, and there are two power and two ground connections per block, so that should be OK, I think. We are using the same track connections we had prior to installing the 2nd panel. Only the under-the-table stuff has changed.
Hopefully you have more than one power hook-up or lockon device. Depending on the age and condition of the track you may need to put extra power lockons every four sections of track.
Some people have soldered the track together for better electrical connections. The only problem is when you want to remove or replace track sections, then you have to remove the solder.
Lee F.
Our family's layout has two transformers and two control panels. The main panel (connected to a ZW) governs the whole layout. But in one hand-to-reach corner, there is a second panel (hooked to a 1033) which governs the blocks in that area.
Electrical wires which are connected to the tracks in this area are routed to the secondary panel. From here, wires run either to the 1033, or to the main panel, and thus to the ZW. This way, an operator at the secondary panel can choose which tracks he needs to have control over, leaving the others electrically connected to the ZW.
So, a simple diagram of the arrangement would look like this:
TRACK------PANEL #2------------PANEL #1---------ZW
|_________ 1033
The wiring is 14 gauge stranded copper.
Ever since this system was put in place, we have experienced noticeable voltage drop (1.5 to 2 volts, compared to other parts of the layout) in this area when running trains from the ZW. I suppose some voltage drop was to be expected, what with adding a lot of additional wire and toggles, but that doesn't make it any more fun to deal with. It's particularly annoying because there are grades in this area--not the place where you suddenly want to have less "juice"!
Any ideas on how to alleviate the problem?
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