Phoebe Vet "There will be 5 digitrax boosters to start located in the center of the room." How many trains are you going to be running that you need 5 boosters?
"There will be 5 digitrax boosters to start located in the center of the room."
How many trains are you going to be running that you need 5 boosters?
On a 30x40 club layout, especially during open houses, I would expect the answer to be "a lot". Probably not overkill.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Dave
Lackawanna Route of the Phoebe Snow
I am rewiring my clubs layout also. We went to DCC about five years ago and didn't have to make any changes to the wiring. Most of the members are not young so when I began rewiring I made Duct that is on the outside facia of the layout so there is no longer any need to crawl under the layout to do soldering or attaching wires while scrunched up under it. 14 AWG is for the DCC buss. And 20 AWG is for the track feeders. To secure the wires and make connections I used pass through barrier strips from allelectronics.com part #TB 35. No soldering is necessary to connect the feeders and the barrier strips make it easy to add feeder wires or make changes. A new facia is used to cover the duct and looks very nice.
Our club has a many years old DC layout with 14 blocks and common rail that has been converted to DCC wiring using #14 buss and #22 feeders. I double over the end of the #22 before inserting the wire into the suitcase connector.
I monitor the voltage in each block with a couple HO sound locos running and we have been good. We have run as many as twelve sound locos but run about six or seven on average. I have a DIY DCC voltmeter in case we ever see an issue so it is easy to check a section for a defective connection.
We do one block at a time. Some people do a complete layout and run into trouble with shorts. Make checks every so often.
I work under the layout and another fellow is working on top in case of needing another feeder and cutting gaps were required. We have two cross overs and use two MRC reverser's. We run at least four different types of sound decoders in various locos.
A couple of us have electrical experience which helps a lot.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Ok, here it goes. It has been a while since i have been on the forum but have a wiring question or questions.
I am in the process of rewiring a club layout, approx 30 x 40 feet room. double mainline with one major yard and a hiden staging yard. There will be 5 digitrax boosters to start located in the center of the room. Each booster will be attached to a terminal strip (one district) so i can run a lot of sub districts from that terminal strip. This way we can add circuit breakers (as funds permit), keep it broken up for trouble shooting and maybe for block detection in the furture.
I was going to try and keep the bus wires to 30 feet max, I was going to use 14 gauge wire.(because we have it) with 20 guage feeders. Seperate each mainline into a district and about 8 sub districts each. Break the yard in to several districts. Use 3M SCOTCHLOK 560N SUITCASE CONNECTORS for 14-18 gauge wire, to connect the bus to feeders. If ii had a bus longet than 30 feet i was going to run 12 gauge wire from booster terminal strip to a terminal strip located closer to the district area and then run the 14 gauge bus from there for the feeders.
Will the scotch lock connectors work with the 20 guage feeders?
should we solder feeders to to the bus wire?
another way, is to run the bus wire to multiple terminal strips and then connect the feeder wires with the fork terminal connectors. Every 6 feet or so
with everything broken up into sub districts, Is 14 enough or should we use 12? I hear a lot of people saying to use 12 or even 10, but i read that 14 was good enough for 30 feet and that 12 & 10 were overkill. also i read that you should not go over 30 feet anyway because distortion of the DCC signal.
I have gone round and round in my head with this and was just looking for some input.
thanks