Comments on my post made me laugh...I'd agree, but the 14Ga, I used on the N scale layout was left over...I was being frugal ;0)Dan
Dannyboy6 says that he uses 12 ga. speaker wire with 14-16ga. drops on his O scale layout, and I don't see any overkill there, but 14ga. speaker wire on an N scale layout? That seems a bit much.
On my HO scale layout, which is now 10 years old, I use 14 ga. solid copper household wire for the bus and 22 ga. stranded wire for the drops. That has always worked for me.
Rich
Alton Junction
Dan,
WOW! Talk about building an Ark, You could probably run a refrigerator,or two, with that 4x8,wiring, but whatever,works for You..
Cheers,
Frank
On my O scale layout we used 12 ga. speaker wire with 14-16ga. drops every 3 ft. - works great! One 180Watt powerpack powers 5 Lionel Legacy equipped locos and a trackmobile.On my N scale 4x8 [with 2 yard wings] layout we used 14ga. speaker wire [Kato Unitrack.];13 turnouts and 2 crossovers can run 3-4 DCC [3 w/sound] locos with the NCE PowerCab - no issues.Buy the largest wire you can afford, create a main bus for track and another for turnouts and Accys [separate power pack]. Attach your track to the main buss as often as you can without going crazy [I have 21 drops on the N scale layout - all spurs have their own power drop with a shutoff switch in case I wanna park something and not slow burn electronics]. You won't be sorry.
Have Fun!
Dan
gregcnot sure this is right, and quite the opposite. Any voltage drop across the cables will decrease the max voltage, not increase the minimum voltage.
I *told* you the otters would not agree with me! But LION thinks otters are all wet! Besides, LIONS have their own way of doing things. (Actually otters *do* agree with me, but wildebeests are more tastyier.
ROAR
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
zstripe I have a common sense question,about voltage drop..When I was younger,I lived in a 21/2 story building,with a front door bell,it was wired with 18 gauge wire,the chimes were at least 8ft from the front door,near the ceiling,at least 35 ft,from the front door to the chimes and back down again to the door bell button,if they were concerned about voltage drop,why did they use 18 gauge wire..Lived there 13 yrs,never had a problem with it not working,but did replace the door bell button,due to outdoor weather conditions. Cheers, Frank .
I have a common sense question,about voltage drop..When I was younger,I lived in a 21/2 story building,with a front door bell,it was wired with 18 gauge wire,the chimes were at least 8ft from the front door,near the ceiling,at least 35 ft,from the front door to the chimes and back down again to the door bell button,if they were concerned about voltage drop,why did they use 18 gauge wire..Lived there 13 yrs,never had a problem with it not working,but did replace the door bell button,due to outdoor weather conditions.
.
18 ga is standard for bell and thermostat wiring. Maybe even required by building codes depending on you location. What works, works.
BroadwayLionThe deal, according to the LION, is sure you can run your train on a small wire, but you will not be able to run them SLOWLY with that wire. That one or two volts that make a modern locomotive run slowly will simply not get through the wire.
not sure this is right, and quite the opposite. Any voltage drop across the cables will decrease the max voltage, not increase the minimum voltage.
Your trains may run slower in the far corners of your layout where the cable runs are longest. They should still be able to run as slow as they normally can, but you may need to set the throttle a bit higher.
This Resistance of Wire chart indicates 24 gauge wire has a resistance of 0.026 Ohm per foot.
The voltage drop across 10 ft of 24g wire for a locomotive drawing 0.25A would be 0.065V (10 * 0.026 * 0.25). The drop would be 0.13 if you doubled the current because of a heavy load. The drop would be doubled again, 0.26V, if the wire length were 20', and doubled again to 0.52V if the length were 40'. 18g wire would have a voltage drop of 0.13V for 0.5A and 40'.
While i agree that a heavier wire gauge should be used, it don't think 0.5V vs. 0.12V would that noticeable.
edit:
here's a table of voltage drop vs wire gauge and length for 0.25A current. voltage drop is proportional to length and current. The voltage drop doubles if the current doubles.
amp ohm g 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 ft 0.250 0.0064 18 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.06 V 0.250 0.0160 22 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.14 0.16 V 0.250 0.0260 24 0.03 0.07 0.10 0.13 0.16 0.19 0.23 0.26 V
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
Absolutely...with great care of course. I've been using phone wire extensively for 30+ years for all applications on a layout. I got 1000's of feet of the stuff in the early 80's when my employer at the time was changing out their phone system and upgrading their mainframe computer. Perfect for signals, switch machines, and lighting. For trains...if used on any track that carries light trains that don't pull major amps...yes. On a high load mainline, pair the wires. That places two wires in parallel. In electronics two equal value resistors in parallel...here the resistors being wire...creates half or less resistance in the circuit.
The lower resistance of doubled up wire will allow for higher amperage and greater power dissipation.
I've run 2.5 A @12 V continuous and 5A @12V for short periods with doubled phone wire without problems.
Currently I am using paired 20 gauge with 150 watt power supplies...still no issues.
Mark H
Modeling in HO...Reading and Conrail together in an alternate history.
Just use 18 gauge stranded wire,for blocks that are over 6 foot long,use, at least two feeders,daisy chained to the 18 and the 18 just goes back to your control. End of story! Don't rely on rail joiners to carry current.
bakerboy2008 When you do the wiring on the layout, could you use telephone wire/network cable wire?
If you are talking about DCC then it will still might work depending on how many locos are on the layout, their proximity to one another, how many other things drawing power, and how many of those tiny wires there are going from the DCC system to the track. The more wires the more the current is distributed over them. I was testing on a layout last weekend where the fellow used CAT5 wire which is very similar in size to the phone wire. He used 2 (a pair) for each block, blocks were small, the longest distance from power supply to track was about 10 feet. We stress tested it all day with no issues.
I would not use that type of wire today on anything larger than 4x8.
The deal, according to the LION, is sure you can run your train on a small wire, but you will not be able to run them SLOWLY with that wire. That one or two volts that make a modern locomotive run slowly will simply not get through the wire.
NOW otters here have argued with me over this, but my findings are my findings, and yours may be different.
Layout of LION is in room 24' x 27' and train of LION passes through this room more than four times trying to wend its way from 242nd Street to South Ferry. It takes about 10 minutes one way. Figure LOTS of wire. Good wire works better. But LIONS are known to be CHEAP, and so get salvage where you can.
I have always gotten away with telephone wire for my DC layouts. I use 2 or even 4 wires instead of one and keep the single wire drops short as possible. I have never experienced any current drop problems using the multiple wires. I got several miles of the stuff when they stripped the old Big Four freight house in E St Louis and it seemed a shame to waste it.
I would suggest that you use a feeder about every 6 feet on each block.
Number 10 bare copper wire makes an excellent ground buss for common rail wiring.
If your benchwork is open grid style, drill the holes for the main wire runs through the cross members before you put the top sheathing on. Makes things easier later on.
be happy in your work
charlie
In order to address the OP's question, we need to understand the factors at play. Thin wires do not transmit amperage easily. The cause is more resistance, and in turn that tends to heat up the wires as you up the amperage you are trying to draw through them. Additionally, long wires, regardless of thickness, do not carry voltage well. As a wire of a given thickness or gauge lengthens, the voltage measured at any one point that is closer to the far end of the wire will show a measurable voltage drop.
Voltage drops of the kind we're likely to encounter on a smallish DC layout, even one wired entirely with 22 gauge wire, are NOT going to be show stoppers. In DCC, maybe, but a test would be definitive.
So, to our OP, and as Chuck has just finished telling you, keeping the runs of 22 gauge wire as short as possible, running as few as possible up to the rails, is going to work just fine for your DC layout. Be aware that you won't find the maximum output voltage from your power supply showing up at the rails where your furthest set of feeder wires meet the metal of the rails. But I'll be the drop won't amount to more than about 0.5 volt.
If you were wiring a lllloooooooong shelf layout, and doing it linearly from one end to the other, say 20 feet, and you used the same wire, your voltage drops would be much more severe. As a SWAG, something like two to three volts, so quite significant. A glance at one of the on-line tables or applets where you plug in your numbers will tell the tale.
My advice? Use your wire, but if your layout will have rails more than about 10' from the terminals on your transformer, you might want to scroung some 14 gauge wire, or lift some from a dumpster and use it as a bus, sort of a spine running down the center of your benchwork, and branch your 22 gauge feeders off of that bus.
-Crandell
A LONG time ago, I scored a lot of old (at the time) telecon cable - the base was redoing a system that still had plugboard operator stations(!) The individual wires were #22 solid, and I have since used them for everything except common rail and switch machine power busses. I have never encountered any problems powering twin-coil switch machines, doubleheaded EFs with two open-frame power-hogs per each, or a lighted six-car DMU set with three old vertical shaft motors.
More recently, I acquired several reels of modern twisted pair phone wire. Those are #24 (says so right on the box.) A glance at a current capacity chart tells me that two #24 wires are equivalent to one #22 wire, so I treat the pair as a single wire (unless the current requirement is an LED or two, in which case a single #24 is adequate.)
For analog DC, the usual recommended practices for DCC are gross overkill - sort of like installing two inch pipe to your bathroom sink spigots. Also, unless you have infinite funds available for discretionary spending, by all means recycle what you have rather than buy new.
As for identifying wires, I use a layout-specific alphanumeric code for EVERY wire and connection on the layout. The labeled schematics are kept in a hard copy file, on disc and on a thumb drive. The appropriate code is printed next to every connection on my stud-and-nut terminal blocks and at every place where a wire is soldered to a rail or terminal. When it becomes necessary to troubleshoot old work, there is no such thing as overdocumentation.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with electricals as bulletproof as I can make them)
I use telephone wire for switch motors and structure lighting. I do NOT use it for rail power.
Strictly follow a color code and LABEL EVERYTHING. The actual color assignments do not matter as long as it is consistent over the entire layout.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
I use 4-conductor phone wire for wiring turnouts. That is generally "point-to-point" wiring, from the control panel to the turnouts. As others have said, you will want much heavier wire for your track power. For track and structures, I prefer a "bus" wiring arrangement, rather than point-to-point, as it's more economical and easier to wire.
For my twin-coil machines (Atlas and Peco) I drive them with a capacitive discharge circuit. This gives a better "kick" to throw the points, which overcomes the disadvantage of power loss in long runs of the thin phone wire.
Another suggestion - come up with a color-code for your wiring, and stick to it.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Hi,
I know its really tempting to use whatever wire/cable one has on hand rather than buying for the specific need. Don't do it. I'm not saying there are no uses for it, but am saying that for track power or turnout control, it is likely way too small.
Having said that, I had a reel of the OLD 4 color telephone cable (red/yellow/green/black) which I use for turnout controls. It works just fine, but my longest run is less than 20 feet. Of course that old style telephone wire is typically a bigger wire than what is used today.
While I'm here, don't go cheap on the number of feeders you put in. For DC, at least have one every 5 feet and on every dead end siding track. A little more up front work here will give you better and more reliable performance.
ENJOY !
Mobilman44
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
bakerboy2008When you do the wiring on the layout, could you use telephone wire/network cable wire?
of course you can
But as Lion explained, telecom wire is not designed to carry large currents. The thinner the wire the more resistance. The longer the wire, the more voltage drop across the wire and the less voltage reaches the motor.
your better off using a larger gauge wire (18g as Lion suggests). For DC, you'll need to use the larger wire from your control panel to each DC block. If you were using DCC, your could use a single larger gauge wire as a bus around the layout, and short, smaller gauge wires between the bus and rails.
the Small Wire (28 - 40 ga.) Current Capacities thread covered some of this.
= am going dc on the layout.
love any kind of train
There are (according to the LION) two kinds of wiring, and also two distinct phases to your wiring.
Go at it like you are building a house. You rough in your cables even before you put the deck on your tables. Are you using DCC: Rough in a 14 ga bus all around the table. Go ahead and use solid bare wire, staple them into place so that they will never touch each other. Are you using DC Block wiring, rough in enough wires, 18 ga lamp cord may be sufficient, to many place on your layout and just let them dangle there for now. It is better to have too many (call it for future expansion) than to have one too few.
For switches, signals, structure lighting, you can surely use telephone / cat-5 cable. LION prefers to use 25 pair cat-3 cable. Him runs it around the layout with patch panels every ten feet or so. (think punch down block -- except of course I use nails on a plywood board rather than buying actual punch down blocks) Since you are using such short lengths of this cat-3 you should be able to buy scraps from a company that installs telephone cable.
LION has a GROUND conductor (also bare) running around the layout, signals, switch machines, lighting all use this as their return path. LION uses tortoise switch machines and wires them according to the plan show on my web site. Only ONE wire to each machine.
Once WIRE is roughed in, you can build the deck, lay the tracks and grow some buildings. If your layout will be small, you can install these cables in an hour, if your lay out is big, it may take days, but it will save tons of grief later.
When you get to this part of layout building, connecting to these wires that you already have in place is easy. LION mounts his wires on a sub-fascia right there where he can access them like a gentle person. Your finished fascia then just snaps into place over the wires, and you are done/!
Hi everyone,
Not sure if I am posting this in the right section. When you do the wiring on the layout, could you use telephone wire/network cable wire? Thanks.