how far shouid feeder drops be and how thick should my bus wires be im useing 22 gauge is that ok or should i use somethin different thanks zachary fliowe
One for every piece of Flextrack as rail joiners will loosen over time and cause intermittent contact. If you're going to use 22 Gauge wire, keep them short. Your main feeder bus should be much larger than that.
I would recommend 18 gauge for the feeders and 14 gauge for the buss. Have a look at these pages from the NMRA. They have a lot of information on wiring. http://www.nmra.org/beginner/basicplan.html http://www.nmra.org/beginner/extended.html http://www.nmra.org/beginner/ex_plus.html
Feeder wire should not exceed 6". Any longer than that will drop the current. I use 20 gauge for the feeders and 14 gauge for the bus lines. Keep in mind you dont want to use smaller gauge wire all around because it will not handle the electrical current and will generate more heat causing major problems! Yet on the flip side, you dont want to use large wire which will lose the electrical current resulting in lost power to the track.
I used 18 gauge for the main feeders and 20 gauge to the track. The layout is built with flex track and there are only four sets of feeders to the main line. I soldered all the railjoiners to eliminate all the feeders.
With wire gauge it's a history. At first we had thick wires. The old motors needed some current. Then came can motors. The wire could be thin. Now we have sound decoder and the wires should be thicker. My main wire is about gauge 13. Wolfgang
I don't really follow this...perhaps I am misreading. Generally, the thicker the wire (the more cross-section it has), the less resistant it is to current flow. So, if you must use longer wires, use thicker longer wires. A simple rule. The thinner the wire, the more resistance it imposes on the current (working energy) of the electricity. The motor uses current to do the work, and if your wires are too thin, it's like trying to draw a golf ball through a garden hose...it can be done, but it is awfully hard on the body. Your statement that I highlited above is simply untrue. The bus wire should be nice and thick to minimize voltage reduction over distance. The feeders can be many feet long if they are of a suitable gauge. If you get into telephone-sized wire, you'd be better to keep it within a couple of feet at most so that voltage losses are kept to a minimum. Since feeders only supply power to a short segment of track (say less than 6' at a time), they can be anywhere from just long enough to reach up through the scenery and to the rail foot up to about 2' long. The longer lengths won't impose a significant voltage reduction on that segment of track.
