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Three things to keep in mind. While you may not actually use much power, you will have a lot of "things" plugged in at once. Power supplies, tools, soldering irond, drop lights, ect. Its important to not start out having to use multi taps at outlets or having extention cords running everywhere. Therefore, don't be skimpy with the outlets. I made mine such that each outlet is a quad receptcle ( 4 plugs can be connected at once). To clarify, a receptacle is a connection point for one plug. An oulet is simply a location to connect into the electric system in your house. An outlet can have any number of recptacles, 2 being the normal. The terms are used interchangably, but they mean very different things. The national Electric code limits the number of recptacles that can be on a single circuit by using the formula of 80 VA per recptacle . For this example only, VA is equal to watts. So 20A x 120 Volts = 2400 watts. 2400 / 80 = 30. Thats 30 recptacles. A typical outlet is a Duplex receptacle (2), so that counts as 2. A quad would count as 4. Lighting should always be on a seperate circuit. In a train room setting, all the recptacles of all the outlets ( top and bottom ) should be controlled by one master switch that gets turned off when you are done with the layout. Power supplies overheat, soldering irons get left on, drop lights are left against plastic. It happens. In 35 years as a fireman, iv'e seen all this happen. Neal
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