Everything I have read says the bus should be around 16 gauge but how do you connect it to tthe NCE unit? Looking at it the connectors are very small. I am picking up wire today to work on it this weekend. Am I missing something?
The bus wires connect to the back of the Power Panel according to the diagram on page 14 of the PowerCab instruction manual. If you have a soldering iron and are using stranded wire (I use speaker wire) it's best to tightly twist the ends of the wire and tin it before connecting to the power panel.
jseese,
As Chuck said, the bus wires connect to the back of the Power Cab's black PCP panel. I use 14ga wire for my power bus and, I believe (I can't verify that until I get back home this evening) that I have it going right into those connectors. When you loosen the hold down screw on top of the connector, they're bigger than you think they are.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Those type os screw terminals should easily handle #16 wire. I use Digitrax but the screw terminals for the track bus are the same type that NCE uses - my bus is #14 and it fits in just fine. #12 is where it gets to be a little tough. However, you can use a short length of somethign smaller, like #18, to jumper from the terminal block to the bus wire and it's not going to hurt anything. A total of 6 inches of #18 in each terminal, 1 foot total of #18 wire in the circuit, even at full load on teh Power Cab is going to drop an insignificant amount of voltage. Insignificant in the sense that you probably wouldn't be able to measure it with a typical inexpensive multimeter.
---Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Thanks guys for the help. It definitly looks much smaller then it probably is. I am going to use 16ga wire so sounds like it should fit. Thanks!!