Any guage wire will work, but the thinner they are, the shorter they should be in order to keep voltage throughput robust and to handle spikes in amperage. You don't want them acting as your fuses or circuit breakers. Or stove elements.
It's a good idea to have a solid grasp of your power requirements in any one part of the rail system, and to wire that part of the layout commensurate with established engineering guidelines for power transmission via wires. You can find charts all over the internet that will help you to establish the thinnest gauge of wire you should use for a given length and power transmission.
General rule in the hobby for feeders: about 22 gauge or thicker, and keep them as short as you possibly can to keep the voltage robust down their lengths. If you have thinner stuff, make sure you aren't putting 5 amps through them, at least not for more than a few seconds before a circuit protection system cuts in and saves you from having to reach for a fire extinguisher. Apart from that, I agree with the others that using various gauges should not present a problem.
Less important than the size of the feeder wire is the location and number of feeder wires.
When my track was down I would go down the track from a feeder and conduct the quarter test. When I got to a point where the quarter test failed I moved back half way to the last feeder and installed a new feeder. (My track is code 70 ME soldered at all joints and all turnouts are FastTrack powered frog.) In the end I estimate the average distance between feeders is about 6-8'.
The most important thing is that any point on the layout must pass the quarter test. The size of the feeder will impact this test, but not near as greatly as number and location of the feeders.
Keep your stick on the ice.D
You will have no problem with mixed gauges for feeder wire.
I would use heavier wire than the very thin stuff on those pre-made connectors. I make my own joiner-feeders, but I use #22 wire for my feeders. The Atlas ones you have are about #28. (Higher numbers denote thinner wires.)
Like bus wires, thicker wire carries power more efficiently, with less loss, so more of it gets to your trains and less gets absorbed by the wire. Another problem with very thin wires is that they are more prone to breakage, especially where they are soldered either to the joiner, the track or the bus.
When you buy your wire, get two colors, the same as those for your bus. It's a lot easier to start using a consistent color scheme for your wiring right away, both when you're installing it and years later when you're changing and maintaining it.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Hello all,
i just got done laying subroadbed on my layout and am about to start laying track. I wanted to know if their was any issues that would arise using DCC if some of the feeder wires were different gauge?
i have i believe 2 atlas railjoiners that have the feeder attached, I was going to lay the track and test the preformance first on DC before I go about putting feeders all the way around in case I have to move something. I cannot find the gauge of these atlas feeders so I figured I would ask before I make a large mistake I dont see coming
Thanks,
Spartan