DCC Feeders and Bus Wires

[Scottl]

Gotcha.  Those are folks that need all the help they can get, I suppose.

[peteski]

Haha, John!  This is exactly what I did this afternoon.  I'm not finished with all of my drops, but I have enough that the layout is up and running again.  First, I moved the command station and tore out all of the old wiring.  The command station is now located under Raeford and plugs into an outlet near the water heater.

I would call that absolutely perfect HCD DCC bus!  Nice Job Mr. Foxx!

[davefoxx]

Thanks, Pete!  These bus wires are working so much better than my first attempt where I tried to hide the wires inside the HCD.  That may have been a cleaner look, but it was difficult to solder wires up in the door and trace wires.

DFF

[John]

I would call that absolutely perfect HCD DCC bus!  Nice Job Mr. Foxx!

That is high praise .. sticky this post

[John]

The only thing I think I would do different is another anchor point or two on the buss around the middle of the door ..  maybe a piece of 1x2

[tappertrainman]

I would call that absolutely perfect OCD HCD DCC bus!  Nice Job Mr. Foxx!

Fixed.  That wire is so straight I thought I was looking at a new guitar string wiring system...

James

[davefoxx]

Haha!  The bus wires are actually under a little bit of tension, so they will ring a low tone like a bass guitar string (until I started soldering feeders to it).  I did that because I wanted to avoid as much sag in the bus wires as possible.  I have two children at home, so I have concerns with sagging wires getting snagged or enticing small hands to pull on them.  You can see why my original plan was to bury all wires inside the cavity of the HCD.  If it gets bad, I'll do as John suggested and throw in another support in the middle.  For now, I don't think I need to do so.

DFF

[robert3985]

One of the things you're evidently not doing from your photos is not necessarily just for DCC, but just good model railroad wiring practice, and that is to put a feeder on every piece of rail...no matter how short.

Of course, if the track up top is sectional, that makes for a lot of feeders, which is one good reason to go with flex rather than hundreds of short pieces of track.

When I went DCC about five/six years ago, I cut out all of my rat's nest DC wiring, bit the bullet and installed 6" feeders on each piece of rail.

I used 12 ga. low-oxygen, high purity, finely stranded, red & black speaker zip wire for each of my two mainlines and my branchlines, for three power districts.  After doing some more research, it appears that 14 ga. high quality wire is better suited for DCC because of less signal cancelling, which the larger gauge does more of.  Practically, I don't have any problems with it with over 150' of mainline run so far.

I also went with genuine 3M IDC's which in the last 30 or so years of running portable modules and layouts have given me no problems as opposed to soldered joints.

I wanted to stay away from screw connections anywhere, so I made 14 ga. sub-feeders to go between my 12 ga main buses and the 22 ga. track feeders.  Works well for me, and each 14 ga. sub-feeder is less than 3' long.

Running at shows and at home, I have had zero problems with signal loss, or any dead track caused by oxidized solder joints or expanded rail joiners being used to carry current on the rails....as opposed to my previous "bad" DC wiring on the same tracks!

Here's a photo of the underside of one of the four 6' modules that comprise my Echo LDE showing the main 12 ga. power buses, the 14 ga. sub-feeders, the 6" track feeders and the 3M IDC's:


Just for giggles, here's a photo of the topside of Echo while I was soldering my feeders to the underside of every piece of rail.  Looks like I'm growing skinny red worms!:


I find that the 3M IDC's are "neater" than soldered connections, more reliable and are instantly insulated.  The "lumps" I do not find artistically offensive in the least. 

Just the way I did it, and will continue to do it as my modular layout continues to grow...

[davefoxx]

Bob,

The wiring job in your photo is a work of art.  You're correct that I need more feeders, and I will be adding those as time allows.  This is the number one reason why most of the track on my layout continues to be unpainted.  This weekend's project was to just tear out the wiring and start anew.  It's not finished.

I'm not so sure that I'll solder a wire to every rail and will probably just go every few feet or so, depending on whether the rail joints are soldered (I soldered the rails in the curved sections only).  If I develop a problem down the road in a small section, I can always add another feeder.

DFF

[robert3985]

Bob,

The wiring job in your photo is a work of art.  You're correct that I need more feeders, and I will be adding those as time allows.  This is the number one reason why most of the track on my layout continues to be unpainted.  This weekend's project was to just tear out the wiring and start anew.  It's not finished.

I'm not so sure that I'll solder a wire to every rail and will probably just go every few feet or so, depending on whether the rail joints are soldered (I soldered the rails in the curved sections only).  If I develop a problem down the road in a small section, I can always add another feeder.

DFF

You're ahead of me, cause I soldered all of mine after the track had been painted and about half of it ballasted!  What a PITA!  Luckily, I have a resistance soldering station so I bent up a pair of tweezer electrodes to hold the flattened, tinned feeder tip to the bottom of the rail foot...hold with the tweezer...flux, tap the foot switch...zap...smoke...off the foot switch..continue to hold, release...on to the next one.

One of the main reasons I decided to do EVERY piece of rail is because my layout is portable and gets taken to 3 shows per year in the back of a big U-haul trailer.  Both the bouncing around and the temperature extremes as well as my Bright Boying make the joints on the rails fail electrically quite often.  Now, they're strictly mechanical, and I haven't had a dead rail since I installed the feeders about six years ago.

I also put a glob of thick cyanoacrylate on both the feeders and the plywood where they come out of their drilled holes...then squirt it with accelerator.  Blow hot air from a hair dryer on it to get rid of the accelerator aroma, which also sets off the glue quicker because of the heat.  I do this so the feeders are less likely to pull off the bottom of my rails because they're nearly invisible after I've painted them, then re-ballasted their location.  I don't want to have to spend any time looking for feeders which, for whatever reason, have been pulled off the rails.  Works so far!

[davefoxx]

I wondered how you installed the feeder on the bottom of painted and ballasted track.  Good stuff!  I don't have that equipment, so I'll have to stick to the old tried-and-true method of soldering to the side of the rail.  Once painted, though, the feeders are not that noticeable.

Thanks,
DFF