wire size

[mattb]

I have almost always used 14-2 Romex house wiring for my slot tracks. This is always easy as the bare wire is common between lanes, white is one lane and black is the other. I know it is overkill, but I always have plenty laying around. I am close to a rewire and minor reconstruction on my home track. I want to clean things up some and use a smaller, neater wire.

What size wire do most of you use? 16? 18?

thanks

[TsgtRet]

It all kind of depends on how long the physical run of the wires is; if it isn't too long you could get away with 20 (or smaller). If it's a longer run you might want to go with 18, just remember the thinner the wire the higher the resistance over a long run. Speaking as an old model railroader I was always more concerned with how easy the wire was to work with (old eyes and stiffer fingers come into the mix here) as a result the wire was always larger gauge than it needed to be. (The same holds true on many of my scratchbuilds; bigger wire= easier to work with).

[HomeRacingWorld]

14 AWG on both my layouts. I usually get it at Lowe's.

[munter]

My rules for wiring are: Keep the power supply as close as you can to the track and use the thickest gauge wire you have. The only time I felt the need for wire taps was on a copper taped track running an old Mura motor powered car. It sucked 8 amps or so all by its little self and down the back straight struggled for juice......but if you are only using RTR type motors (FC, FK, FF etc) then some thin stuff will be OK.

Another scenario for thicker wire is if you are running magnet cars on a multilane(4 or more) track...they will gobble up amps on take off too.

[munter]

Where is the like button?

[dr fabio]

Extension cord is usually 16 gauge. A 10 foot run would have 0.04 ohms. Double that for the return run and you have 0.08 ohms total. If youre running slotit and the like then you'll maybe have a 3 amp max draw on heavy acceleration, a lot less at constant speed.

V = I x r = 3 x 0.08 = 0.24V. So you'll have a 0.24V drop. If you had a track voltage of 12V you would actually get 11.76V.

So the short answer as to the gauge you need depends on the max amp draw and how far the furthest point is from the track to the power supply and how much of a voltage drop is acceptable to you.

[Nor Cal Mike]

Lamp chord here but I only get the kind with one copper wire and one silver colored wire for identification purposes. Not all lamp chord has two wire colors. When I used copper tape, I always used 2 or 3 power taps in the track. Not because of resistance issues, but rather for reliability . With multiple taps, if you had a break somewhere in the copper, you would have far less chance of a power failure with multiple taps. Both my tracks are braid now so that is not an issue any more.

[ccobra]

Overkill, why build a wooden outhouse when you can use cinder block. Anyway, I used 10 gauge TNN wire from my power sources to the four taps on my 45 foot three lane track. I haven't had any issues with power and the track has been kid tested and kid approved by my grandkids.

[mattb]

Thanks guys. I think I will switch to 16gg for the new wiring. I have a 4 lane Carrera tri-oval. Maybe a 30 foot lap length. My power is about 40 amps total, so amp drops thru the wire is probably not an issue. My wiring runs are no more than 6-8 foot as the controller stations are evenly spaced along the front of the track and power taps are across from each other in the center of the straights. Power taps are not actually necessary, but I like the crsisp response you get with a tap every 10-15 foot. Thanks again.