I an redoing my garden railway, taking all existing track up and plan to run wire to a couple points. I will have about 300' of wire when finished and need to know what gauge wire most people use or recommend for this amount of track. Is there underground wire in the samller gauges or do I need to bury conduit. Thank you for any help one can give me.
I would always recommend conduit for ease of change and maintenance. The low voltage lighting wire I use can be buried directly. The joints should be (above ground) in boxes for maintenance. I run 14 gauge for most and 12 gauge for longer runs. You could use smaller for very short runs or track jumper connections. I'm still indoors but getting ready for the big move outside. Joe
My literal answer to the question is "too small".
You need to look at the voltage, current, and distance you are running.
Another consideration is whether you will be running constant track power or not.
A final consideration is what kind of rail joiners and whether you have brass or SS track.
If you can fill in the blanks some more, I can give you a much more informed answer.
In my case, I run near 10 amps a lot on a train, so I need at least 10 gauge, but I am a worst case scenario. (ha ha, let the jokes begin!)
Regards, Greg
Visit my site: http://www.elmassian.com - lots of tips on locos, rolling stock and more.
Click here for Greg's web site
I have Aristo brass track and recently bought 12 pieces of AML flextrack. I'll have about 300' when I'm finished. I am thinking about using an Aristo Train System 55470. I currently have an MRC 6200 power pack. I have talked to people using low voltage wire from decorative lights and didn't know if this voltage would be too much due to the name of the wire being called "low voltage".
16 gauge for the shorter runs (under 30 feet) and 14 ga. for the longer runs. All low voltage landscape wire. I run mostly smaller locos and rarely pull over 5 amps even with double heading on both loops. If you plan on running multi unit big dismals pulling 50 car trains (or whatever floats your boat ) then you would probably want to bump that up.
-Brian
The 55470 is the trackside train engineer.
So, it sounds like you are going to run only one loco on the track at a time, unless you are going to put the TE in a boxcar.
With only one train, brass track, you should not have a lot of problems.
Landscaping wire has a thick jacket, but appearances can be deceiving, and sometimes the wire is not as claimed in gauge. Strip a bit of the insulation to see the gauge.
If you run conduit, you can use less expensive wire with thinner insulation, or even larger gauge wire.
If you are sure you are only going to run 1 or 2 locos at a time on the rails, I would follow Brian's advice. If more locos, or you go to constant track power and can run several independently, go up one or 2 gauges.
The rail joiners may be a concern, depending on your climate, and you should probably consider rail clamps or soldering jumpers.
I have 350 feet of USA brass track and run 3 MTH Dash-8s in a lash up They require 18 volts constant to operate my MTH system I use a bridgewerks 200 trans former one feed 12 gauage landscape wire I have done this for about 5 years now with no problems . I must admit that one time I tried to run 3 Aristo SD-45s and 3 Aristo U- boats at the same time but they ran very slowly but the inline fuse didin't blow. this was for less than 1 min LOL
Ed
What you "need" can be affected by what kind of power you run.
If you run "regular DC", then voltage drop can be compensated by just kicking up the throttle a bit. If you have voltage drop, of course you may be increasing throttle in some spots and decreasing it in others.
If you run a constant track power system, like track power and the Aristo products, MTH DCS, DCC, then you may notice the voltage drops more.
Greg While i am sure you are much more knollable than me on electricty I never se any speed up or slow down and as I can check voltage on my DCS system I see very little if any drop I have run up to150 ft of extenion cord to my transformer as I move my track from place to place(camping) This is with only set of wires attached All my extension cords are 12 gague and so are the wires to the from the TIU. This is just what I see.
Of all systems I mentioned, the actual speed of the loco on a MTH (given enough track voltage) will not vary, since it is always maintaining the correct speed.
I was talking about excessive voltage drop specifically, and said you might see a difference.
Yep, MTH does what is says.
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