Hi!
I believe I alluded to this in a previous posting, but at that time I was more concerned with how to mount the track bus wires for a single power district.
Anyway, I am now wiring track buses for the lower level of the new layout and have three power districts on that level. These bus wires have to cross over each other and some will run in close proximaty to others. Is this a problem? Is there some methods I should adhere to or stay away from, or ???
Note I am using 14 awg bus wire, and feeders are 12 inch or less # 20 awg.
Thanks for your help!
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
If you have multiple power districts, according to accepted defnition in DCC, then you would have a main bus running around your bench, and off it would come the required sub-buses, powered by the various booster, the subs being shorter lengths of the same gauge of wire. Off these subs come the various feeders you need to run the rails properly.
Selector,
I omitted some information on the OP.......
Each of the layout's 8 power districts runs directly to a port in a DCC Specialties Px4 circuit breaker (I have 2 of these). So, there are 8 sets of track bus's - each going to a separate power district.
I would say that you are highly unlikely to experience any transmission or signal-to-noise or cross-talk problems with the set-up you envision. If you were running 150' runs of parallel subs, yeah, I'm pretty sure you would be pulling your hair out before long, but not with what you describe. Especially with wires crossing at right angles....that is good, from what I have gathered.
BTW, have you posted a DCC schematic of your system here? It may be that you have things more complicated than needs be. For example, if I understand your last bit above, you have eight boosters? Why so many? Is your track system going to have something like 600' of track in various compartmentalizations?
-Crandell
I'm the DCC guy for our NTRAK club. We have three bus lines running together around the whole layout. Haven't had and problems since we started running DCC 5 years ago. Each bus is 12 ga zip cord and they are bundled together into a single harness on each modules. We also have a 12VDC bus and a 15VAC bus bundles with the track bus.
One thing we try yo do is keep our loconet cables a foot or so away from the power bus. If it has to cross the bus, do so at a right angle.
Martin Myers
Hi,
I'm running a Digitrax Super Chief, with a second booster. Each of the two boosters is connected to a DCC Specialties PS4 circuit breaker set - which in total yield 8 power districts. The longest power bus run is 25 ft, and most are closer to 20 feet.
I think that between all of us, we agree that you are going to be fine. Just keep the loconet cables apart and away from the buses as suggested earlier.
Selector (and all),
Thank you - I can understand that and will assure that the Loconet line(s) are segregated from the power bus(s). As I will only have two ports for the controllers, so that should not be a problem.
On a loosely related note, the hard part (for this almost 65 & 225lb guy) is weaving the ol bod in and around all the benchwork to put in "wire holders" to assure all wiring is neat and appropriately placed. It was not all that hard when I built the previous layout 14-15 years ago. Hey, I'm not complaining, for I am getting the "job" done, and enjoying it immensely!