This is plain wrong. I never argued that using larger wire would make the modules too heavy. That is plain foolishness and frudulently untrue. I never was against using the Powerpole connectors. I welcomed them. The availability issue with the CJ plugs is not a 2011 happening. It has been happening in different parts of the world for many years. Why did Ntrak suddenly start investigating alternate connectors back before 2005? Because some parts of the world [I believe Australia and possibly other areas] could not obtain them and were switching to other connectors [Molex and RCA plugs I believe]. So the need was there. In my case our club wanted to use some outside corners as inside corners. That required a special wiring harness be made if using CJ plugs but not with Powerpoles. The matter was discussed in our club and we decided that the Powerpoles were better all around. The only negative comment about them in our club [not made by me] was that they did not have a built in strain relief. mfm alleges Imade allegations or statements that I did not ever make. In essence he creates a strawman with no basis in reality then he beats the straw out of the strawman so he can say, "See I win." [by the way the term "strawman" is not in any way a reference to Russell Straw who I personally admire as both a modeller and a person. But I feel I have to state that before I get falsely accused of saying it. Also along these lines is that people keep combining the Powerpoles with the 12 gauge wiring and caiming they are cheaper than 18 gauge wire and CJ plugs. They totally ignore the fact that I endorse the Powerpoles. The real fact isthat Powerpoles and 18 gauge wiring is cheaper than Powerpoles and 12 gauge wiring. In addition this argument is really a strawman that they created because my position was neverbased on cost per se. My position was two fold. First, it was not equitable to require everyone to pay for something that only avery few would reap any benefit from. Second, the alleged "solution", the 12 gauge wiring, really did not solve the problem. Fewer power districts on a given layout did not increase the size of the layout nor did it increase the number of trains that could be run on any given layout. The only thing it did was to increase the power district so that fewer power boosters would be needed. Thus fewer power boosters needed = less cost [power boosters are not cheap]. This would benefit the large mega layouts set up once or twice a year and possibly a few large clubs or gatherings of clubs. Other clubs could do just as Skipgear described in his post and add another power feeder to the opposite side of the layout. That would be a lot cheaper than buying a power booster. But mfm brings up a goodpoint when he asks, "If a club or individual will never join their module(s) to another person or club's module, why use a standard?" The operative word there is the word "never". There are many N scale clubs that are not Ntrak that never join to anyone else. But individuals in out club have attended large conventions and brought their modules. Edison, NJ and Chantilly, VA come to mind. In addition we had other individuals and clubs brimng modules to Bedford and Columbus N Scale weekends [where the emphasis is on smaller individual layouts and not the one big mega layout] and join to our layout. So by inserting the word "never" into his post mfm attempts another strawman argument. But did anyone notice, mfm did not refute my allegations that the 12 gauge wiring will not eliminate the voltage drop. He did not deny my allegations that increasing the power districts will not allow more trains to be run on a given size layout. He did refute my allegation that this was a DCC issue but I think I showed he was wrong with the quotes from the Ntrak Newsletter. I never got into the technical aspects of this mainly because I am no electrical engineer. Professor Sharkman commented on this area and his comments are for everyone to read. In any event there it is. Everyone can make up their own minds if the change in the wire standard was really needed. If you want to go to the 12 gauge wire you are free to do so. But you could have done that under the old standard as well.
Delamaize, I never alleged that the larger wire would add any weight to the modules. That was a complete fabrication as is some other allegations such as I was opposed to Powerpoles. They were strawmen fabricated solely for the purpose of trying to portray my position into something they could beat up on. As for starting a offshoot of Ntrak the DCC people are doing just that with their "Ntrak Classic" and "Ntrak 2.0" concept. Haven't heard too much about that have you? Well, you probably will in the future. As for "keeping bitter Ntrakers happy", maybe things would be different if, like the problems with the CJ plugs, there was a problem that affected all of Ntrak both DCC as well as analog and analog people were included in the discussion. As it was, the committe formed was largely and disproportionately DCC oriented. But, at the time, the voltage drop issue was seen as a purely DCC issue so the make up of the committee was therefore logically DCC oriented. Analog people had solved the voltage drop problem very simply and cheaply with additional power feeders. DCC users could do that also and many DCC clubs did so as Skipgear recounted his clubs experience. But that would work only up to a point because the power feeder was also subject to a voltage drop just as the track bus was. So there was a limit as to how long a power feed could be. The mega layouts exceeded that limit and therefore needed the power boosters. The wire change therefore only sought to lessen the number of power boosters needed. Consider tyhe Derby City Express in Louisville, KY in 2008. Derby City Express holds the record currently for the most modules in one layout. I believe the number is 702. This occupied a space of 200 X 250 feet with over 3800 feet of track on the red line. In scale miles that was over 116 miles. Impressive? Very much so. Consider these statistics: "The following are the total statistics relating to Red Line Route DCC for the DCE layout: Command Station: 1 LocoNet Repeaters: 16 in center core, more in individual loops Boosters: 42 Radio Receivers (Simplex): 16 Radio Receivers (Duplex): 7 (for beta test) Feet of LocoNet cables used (estimated): 6,500 (includes ThrottleNet + BoosterNet) Maximum simultaneous engineers running on the Red Line Route: 93 This was an enormous undertaking and those responsible for it did yeoman service and deserve all the accolades. Unfortunately, despite the hard work, the layout was beset with some problems and not all of it was fully functional until some time Saturday afternoon. The main problem was voltage related but not due to any voltage drop. The problem was they were feeding only 12 volts into the LNP's. They were not losing voltage; they just didn't have enough from the get go. So a run was made to Radio Shack to obtain 15 volt power supplies for the loco net and that solved the problem. But notice they needed 42 power boosters and they had a max of 93 operators at any one time. That's an average of 2.2 operators per booster and on average, about 90.5 feet per power district. If all the modules were equipped with Powerpole connectors they would have realized a 30% reduction in voltage drop per district so now each power district could be 30% larger or 117.65 feet. If that were the case then they would only need 32 power boosters than the 42 they had. Still, space that size, 50,000 sq ft, is not cheap and organizations who can afford to rent that amount of space and devote it to a layout are very few and I can assure you that Ntrak is not one of them. Derby City had the facility to build that big of a layout and set as their goal to smash the previous record at Chantilly in 2004. Derby City occurred in 2008. In the years since no attempt has been made to beat that layout in size. Maybe somewhere there is a locale with a facility large enough and the promoters have enough money to purchase the hardware needed to pull it off. I don't know, we shall see. What we have seen though is more events such as the N Scale Weekends first in Bedford, PA and now in Columbus, OH. Where there are many layouts, some DCC, some not, most Ntrak, some not, some big most not. So maybe bigger is not always better and KISS, Keep It Simple Stupid, works better than complexity.
Hi Johnny, Let me first say that Anecdotal does not mean it will not work for you as is. It depends more on the type of track, turnouts, wire characteristics etc. In my case I found that twisting the bus wires caused the dead spots, but that does not mean it will for you or anyone else. As for the connections to the control cards, I would not worry about those. The on-board electronics should clean up the signal just fine. I would also only replace the bus wires if you had the unexplained dead spots.
Thanks, I jumped the gun and started a new thread because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow of this topic and I wanted to start figuring out my next plan..
DCESharkman goes on about the need for (presumably high) quality wiring. But how high is high enough? The updated 2011 NTRAK standard is rather vague about the requirements. It states: “The bus shall be 12-gauge stranded copper zip wire (red/black zip wire, outdoor low-voltage lighting wire or speaker wire), or equivalent.’ Nothing is stated about the purity of copper, stranding, type of insulation, parallel vs. twisted-pair, etc. If regular “lamp” cord is inadequate, is there then some happy medium between that and the fancy products targeted at the car stereo/home theater market? Is there something suitable commonly available at Radio Shack, Home Depot or Lowes? Can anyone suggest a specific cable from, say, Belden or Alpha that can be ordered from Digi-Key, Mouser or Newark? If there’s that much fuss about commercial power strips, what are the chances that some smart-aleck electrical inspector will demand that even the track bus wiring must have UL/CSA approval or be NEC riser/plenum rated? Is claiming that the track bus wiring carries only non-hazardous voltage sufficient?
The mentioned outdoor low voltage wire is about the worst quality wire made. It was not made for alternating current applications, it was designed for 12V DC lighting. Copper purity is a nominal 60%. It is commonly referred to as pig copper because of the sloppy alloying of the metals. You are also correct that there is no real specification about the number of strands or the strand twist rate. So there is no inkling of material quality at all in the standard. It is just , this is bigger so it must be better sort of thing. I solve electrical propagation problems on a daily basis. That is how I make my living. Specifications were generated empirically instead of analytically. If this was the way science was ignored in the past, we would all still think the earth was flat and that the sun rotates around the earth. The issue with the NMRA and also NTrak is that they have no idea how to write a proper electrical or system specification, let alone, how to analyze the real signal characteristics so they could understand what they were dealing with. On the NMRA side, how you can call anything a command and control system without having feedback capability, a requirement for a true control system. Any junior year student in engineering school would know and understand this. I am not sure the Ntrak decision makers realize the the impedance of the wire with respect to the signal has a complex nature to it that also varies with the length of the wire used as well. They are only concerned about the real valued resistance and not at all concerned about the complex value of the reactance. Things like twisting wires to keep signals from leaking, well with only 12 volts and 5 -8 amps of power, the magnetic field density is not strong enough to couple energy to any thing farther away than a centimeter or two away. And even if it did, if the next closest wires are using the same signal it doesn't really cause any problems due to reciprocity and superposition of electromagnetic signals. In the end, making the wire bigger so it can send more energy farther distances is a self defeating situation without material quality standards. And good quality 16 gauge wire will outperform low voltage outdoor cable any day of the week.
Oh this is getting interesting. I haven’t heard this before, but as an electrician, I have noticed the different qualities of wire after 40 years of stripping the stuff.
Last night, at our monthly Ntrak club business meeting the change in the wiring standard came up for discussion and vote. The vote was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing to use the wire gauge that we have been using since the club's inception and abide by the 1974 wiring standard. We did not include the use of Powerpoles in the vote as that vote had been taken seveal years earlier and had resulted in a yes vote for the Powerpoles. So now our modules will now feature Powerpole connetors and 16 gauge stranded copper wire. Club members are free to upgrade their CJ plugs to Powerpoles if they so desire.
