MRC Prodigy Advanced

[Anonymous]

I am new to DCC and purchased a Prodigy Advanced with a NCE DA SR decoder. I ran a buss line around my layout and am in the process of tying in my drops. My question is should my buss line be tied back into itself in a complete circle or should there be a gap between the ends of the buss line?

[rrinker]

Simple answer - it doesn't matter

Best practices tend to say to put the boster in the middle so that the bus runs out in nearly equal distances to either side. No, it does NOT have to be EXACTLY the same on both sides. The idea is to keep the bus runs as short as possible while still getting power to where you need it. On smaller layouts the maximum run length is short enough that it really wouldn't matter - say on a 4x8 layout. When you start surrounding the walls of a 10x10 room and bigger, then you start getting into situations where the wire length is long enough to cause voltage drops. If you had, say, 100 linear feet of track and ran the bus under all of it, and put the booster at one end, you'd have 200 feet of wire (complete circuit - has to go out and back), and even with #12 wire this is enough to cause a noticeable voltage drop. So is this important? Yes. But at the same time, i think it is made overly complicated for the beginner with a smaller layout, and that only serves to scare them away.


--Randy

[Anonymous]

Thanks. This is what I was thinking. My layout is 9x13 and the command center is located almost in the center.