Wire gauge for sidings and lights

[kasskaboose]

I bought 14 gauage wire from HD to use on sidings and lights on my 12x7 layout in DC.  Is 14 gauge too thck?  If, so what gauge to use?  I thought to have different color insulated wire so I differntiate between the wires.

TIA~

~Lee 

[Train Modeler]

I prefer stranded wire, between 22 and 16--depending on what I'm powering.    14 is good for light household use--15 amps, 120 volts.     We're dealing with maybe 5 amps and maybe up to 18 volts.   Unless you're running 100s of feet of wiring the voltage drop won't likely be noticeable with say 14 vs 20.

Some prefer solid wire, but I like working with the stranded for soldering and installation.

Richard

[rrinker]

14 is fine. It IS too heavy to solder directly to the rails, so you'll need to use somethign smaller as a feeder from the #14 to the rails. It's overkill for the distances involved in a 12x7 layout, but it won;t hurt anythign to use heavier than needed wires. I used #12 on my previous 8x12 layout, BUT that was intended to be just the start of a layout that went around the walls over 50 feet down the basement wall and about 25 feet across another section. My current layout is 10x15 around the walls of a bedroom, I used #14 this time.

 If I didn;t already have wire, and needed to buy some for a 12x7 layotu, I'd probably use #16. But since you already have it, the #14 is fine. 18, 16, 14, and 12 are alla vailable at HD and Lowes  in spools of various colors, so you can color code things fairly easily. Multipel colors PLUS tags for labels is best, but the same colors repeated, with tags to label each run, also works fine. I have 4 bus runs around my layout, all using the same colro pairs, but I also have stick-on number tags wrapped around the wires at intervals, and a notebook documenting all this since if someone asked right now which portion of the layout 1A fed, I wouldn't know without looking. A check of my layout notebook tells me it's the main line clockwise from the yard. At the time you are wiring things, you'll probbaly rememebr it all. Six months or a year from now, when trying to trace a problem, you'll forget. Write it down. Documentation is key. Then proceed to lose the notebook

                         --Randy

 

[modelmaker51]

14 gauge is overkill for sidings and lights. Sidings can be fed by 18-20 gauge. Lights can fed with 18-22 gauge.