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7 Responses to How to Wire 350 ft. of Track (outside)
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John Should be the same as an inside smaller scale such as my HO Scale. Be sure to install Buss Wiring along your tracks with plenty of wire drops from the buss wires to the rails. Distances that big might require bigger wire such as 14 gauge house wiring or larger. I use 16 gauge trailer wire for my HO but so far I don’ t have the distances your saying. DCC has brought the use of Buss wires to hold continuous power to run the chips in your engines. But after looking at what it does we should have been running Buss wires for our standard Dc layouts all along. I remember having loss of power and slower trains on the far side of the layout and if that was DCC connected to that as your power source you would have experienced the loss of control of your chips because of lower voltage.Make sure you power both sides of your switches to continue good power along the way. I remember under standard DC I had run power to the track but as I got past each switch (6 in All) the train would slow down drastically the more switches the power had to get through to your train. Buss wiring fixes that. You can use smaller wire for your drop[ wires from the rails to the buss wires as those short distances are usually not a problem. On my HO I use 24 gauge phone wires from inside your house phone wiring for my wire drops and works fine But, with the lengths you are saying I would increase your wire drops of at least 16 gauge trailer wire. Color coding your wire drops and and your buss wiring will help you follow the rail and it’s wire when trouble shooting or if you decide to extend your tracks farther it will help you follow the right wire to the right rail later on. Go for it Buss wires We should have been using that a long time ago. from Newman Atkinson Terre Haute Indiana
So whether you are DC or DCC you really need to use Buss Wiring. For outdoor layouts it may require protecting the cables or hide them in the rock along your track ballast. You might use house wiring and it might be protected enough for outdoors but really you will be running low voltage through it so heavy protection may not be as bad as you think.
John
Wiring – I wouldn’t wire up the layout at all. Use the tender to carry your fuel as designed (fuel = batteries), Install inexpensive radio receivers in your locos with servos designed for reverse, forward, stop, start, inertia – they are available from model shops – some actually for trains, but mostly for boats and planes. They use a joy stick transmitter (just like real railways in marshalling yards) to control your locos.
These systems are getting cheaper and easier to locate all the time and will save you time, money and copper wire.
Mr Atkinson was correct, john. Lay conduit, run 16 ga. Wire through with drops at intervals. I had unprotected 16 ga wire buried in ballast for 4 years, no problems. I did however have problems using 24 ga for switch power. The thin wire is a bit more susceptible to corrosion. This time i am using 18 ga.
have you thought of battery powering the locomotive with a rc battery and not powering the rail at all. just a thought
a reply to my reply: what i am talking about is converting the loco to rc control not that hard to do battery lasts about 1/2 hour or more befor recharging dirty track no problem more than one loco, convert the whole fleet and their you go look into it i saw something about it on you tube good luck in what ever you do
Bruce,
I do like the idea of radio control of some sort and a case if they would decide to run actual steam Radio would be a nice edition. In HO recently at an NMRA Regional Convention someone came in and demoed a radio cntrolled engine while the rest ran in DCC mode which they had an HO engine running on a battery system with some kind of radio and they were able to continue running even it someone shorted the layout with their train running in DCC mode the battery powered radio throttle kept running while the rest of the layout was dead stopped due to a short.
The MIDWEST LIVE Steam in the Indianapolis area run real steam on G Scale but they manually have to adjust the valves to adjust the speed and such. But if they were radio controlled as suggested they could be able to run in real steam power and maneuver around without touching their engine. They go to many of the train shows in this area.
A power bus is the answer. Use protected really thick gauge solid wire that won’t corrode and attach it every 15 feet or so to each track. Use nickel silver track too! If you still get power drops, run additional bus feeder wires to the outlying parts of the track..