Can this stuff be used as a substitute for the wire normally used to carry power to the rails?
mreagant Can this stuff be used as a substitute for the wire normally used to carry power to the rails?
It's 26 ga.
Resistance is .4 ohms/ 10 feet.
If you are feeding track 10 feet away, and you are running a locomotive that draws 1/2 amp, you will experience a voltage drop of .4 Volts.
Two locomotives, drawing a total of 1 amp on track 15 feet away will experience a voltage drop of 1.2 Volts.
Those distances aren't "as the crow flies". They are the length of the wire run, which will be longer.
If you are running a single loco on a switching layout that is 12' long, yes.
After that, things go downhill.
All the above is assuming you are using one wire in a cable for a particular purpose. IF you have some 4 pair cable, and IF you decided you wanted to use all 8 wires as ONE wire ('cause the wire is "free"), then there's a good bit of headroom to discuss. In simple words, things would only be 1/8 as bad. Which just might be good enough for you.
Ed
The flat telephone wire is super flexible and isn’t made for handling current. Telephones don’t require a lot of current and only draw a few milliamps.The round CAT 3 and up are generally 22 to 24 gauge, 22AWG is rated at .91 max amps, 24 AGW is rated at .577 max amps.Mel My Model Railroad http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/ Bakersfield, California I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Ed, I asked because I have some (4?) wire plugs about every 6 or so feet around my 27x12 layout. They were used for a walk-around throttle before I got my wireless. If that works, it will make it easier getting power to the fold down section I mentioned in my earlier post titled Microswitchs. Only issue might be to figure out to get power to it since I am pretty sure the plugs are not at this point. Thoughts?
The max current rating on a RJ connector is 500ma or ½ amp.Mel Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951My Model Railroad http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/ Bakersfield, California Aging is not for wimps.
There is also relatively poor 'power' contact across those little springs in the 'modular' connectors and plugs if you try to (re)use those. In particular I'd worry that a bad contact might arc enough to heat and melt the plastic, or worse. There is also the question of how effective the punchdown method of wiring modular plugs to the flat cable is.
I do not know what the maximum wire gauge that can be punched into a modular plug actually is. If you want to try using somewhat larger gauge wire to the connectors at the RJ25 jack, and heavier wire punched to the plugs, the overall voltage drop for a 'flexible' section would be less.
Likewise, to detail earlier suggestion a bit more fully, you could 'double' pairs of contacts in the jack, and then use old Ethernet cable with pairs of conductors punched in common to the slots in the plug and then four-gang them correspondingly at the other end to give you "two-wire" throughput via your four-pin modular. You'd want JB Weld or hot-glue strain relief and pull where the eight-pin cable goes to the 4-pin plug, but that's standard kludgemeister practice.
This is all 'for information only' -- I wouldn't do it, and I won't advise that you do it. Wire the drop to the hinged side appropriately, and wire a separate feeder (of 18ga or heavier) and drops to the opposite side without carrying power across the gap.
Even heavy wire can be carried 'flexibly' across a hinge by carrying it out at one side of the hinge, running transversely the width of the hinge, then bending 90 degrees and attaching to the drop piece.
mreagant Ed, I asked because I have some (4?) wire plugs about every 6 or so feet around my 27x12 layout. They were used for a walk-around throttle before I got my wireless. If that works, it will make it easier getting power to the fold down section I mentioned in my earlier post titled Microswitchs. Only issue might be to figure out to get power to it since I am pretty sure the plugs are not at this point. Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Step away from the phone cable, and no one will get hurt!
I just don't see that you're saving all that much time and money going this route. In addition, I would leave the wired system intact, because "you never know".
I know I never know; that's how I know that YOU never know. Sorry, getting a little silly.
Nope. You should do a nice fresh Big Wired job!
7j43k mreagant Ed, I asked because I have some (4?) wire plugs about every 6 or so feet around my 27x12 layout. They were used for a walk-around throttle before I got my wireless. I would leave the wired system intact, because "you never know".
mreagant Ed, I asked because I have some (4?) wire plugs about every 6 or so feet around my 27x12 layout. They were used for a walk-around throttle before I got my wireless.
Ed, I asked because I have some (4?) wire plugs about every 6 or so feet around my 27x12 layout. They were used for a walk-around throttle before I got my wireless.
I would leave the wired system intact, because "you never know".
Rich
Alton Junction
Ok. I've got to figure it out. I'll experiment tomorrow and see what happens.
This is the only POTS wire I've found to be very handy around the layout:
Wire_POTS-crop by Edmund, on Flickr
I think the Bell System guys used to call it Station Wire.
I use the 6 conductor RJ-12 for Digitrax network cable. Most of that is 26 ga. some is 28. I've seen the flat RJ-11 wire actually made with "copper" foil wrapped around a nylon core. Good luck with that.
Wire_POTS by Edmund, on Flickr
This stuff is 22 ga. Strips easily and can be removed from the jacket easily. I'm on my third 500 ft. coil. Very handy for Tortoise wiring, LED lighting, signals and some feeder applications.
Good Luck, Ed
To power my DCC layout, I use 14 gauge solid buss wire and 20 gauge solid feeder wire.
I have used flat white cable 26 gauge stranded 4-conductor telephone wire to power Tortoises. On my old layout, I wanted to operate Tortoises from multiple locations, and I ran lengths of the telephone wire as long as 50 feet with no problems.